Boeroer

Of course Backstab works with any reach weapon. It's just nice that pikes and arquebuses share the same weapon focus. Barb with Tall Grass is also nice, I agree. It's especially nice that you can place the centre of carnage way better with a reach weapon than with a normal melee weapon. Another variant would be Lost Thayn's Reach for the barb. It "only" reduces enemies' ACC by 5 on hit (in an AoE because or carnage), but it stacks with every other ACC debuff and of course all defense buffs. A nother plus is that you will see the proc all the time. With Tall Grass your barb will need some levels in order to reliably crit foes and some are immune to prone. Nothing's immune to disorienting. So if you combine Barbaric Yell (or any other source of frighten - like the chanter's lvl 2 phrase) and Lost Thayn's Reach, it's like casting a stackable AoE spell that does +15 to all defenses. Don't underestimate this, it can be very good. If you use a priest with some defense buffs, too you will see that your whole party will be a lot sturdier while at the same time you will deal nice AoE melee damage. Just a thought though. Or you could give your rogue Durance's Staff and do Backstabs with it. I think that dual damage on a weapon is very useful, especially if one of those is elemental damage. A bit later you could use Llawran's Stick then, which has speed. It's a really nice dps weapon which you can get rel. early in the game. Or just forget Backstab (it's micro-heavy): MaxQuest's suggestion with Persistence is good. You could dump INT entirely in order to raise wounding's dps (Persistance has wounding and wounding's dps raises the less INT you have) and just fire away with that bow. Combined with maxed MIG, PER and DEX this is a great setup for a ranged rogue. Wounding combined with high dmg mods and high MIG is awesome. I agree with Blades of Vanatar that Relentless Storrm + rogue is an awesome combo. It's also very nice for a barb's Barbaric Blow and of course Heart of Fury!

Rogue with reach weapon - especially Tall Grass - is nice,too. Island Aumaua rogue with Arms Bearer & Quick Switch + 4 arquebus is not king of DPS, but the spike damage is really great. Runner's Wounding Shot is great. In fact you can combine both pretty well with 3 arquebuses and 1 pike. I recommend Backstab as well. But only with high stealth. With high stealth you can stay hidden until the enemy reaches your front line. Wait till one of the enemies has two afflictions. Then you either fire one arquebus shot with Sneak + Deathblows + Backstab or you can do two attacks with the pike which will both get Backstab bonus - as long as those are auto attacks. You can add Shadowing Beyond for the hefty fights and also Cape of the Master Mystic in case you get attacked. That will give you 1 invisibility per encounter. You can add another 1/rest with Nightshroud. Doing a Backstab pike rogue atm (no arquebuses) and he's really effective so far (lvl 12). With Boots of Speed you can reach anybody while you're invisible and do either a shot or two pokes with the pike. Melee: Backstab bonus will be applied as long as you click on the target while you are stealthed. It doesn't matter if you unstealth while you run towards the target. You will get two auto attacks with Backstab bonus. Ranged: Backstab bonus will get applied as long as you are stealthed and within 2 meters when you click the attack. So obviously it's easier with melee weapons. And since you get two attacks instead of one shot the damage is cmparabke to an arquebus shot with Backstab. High stealth helps a lot. The king of Backstab is Firebrand from invisibility + Deathblows. I use this as well in really tough fights. With 2 afflictions and the rogue's ACC and crit conversion you usually do a crit with it. Its high base damage is great for Backstab and the annihilating enchantment.

Oh - didn't know that. Interesting.

Josh said they will be more different than in PoE1, esp. the priests.

I only use ZE when I have two paladins. It's not bad - but I like more ACC better in the early game and then I can't be bothered with retraining later. But if you have party members with their own ACC buffs like Disciplined Barrage, Eldritch Aim or whatever you might be better off with ZE because ZF will not stack with those.

It may be that everything is correct. One handed wielding may be coded in a way that it only affects the initial hit roll against deflection. The second roll against fortitude is not affected. And it makes sense (kind of): You can hit critical spots more easily, but it's not easier to topple enemies over with a single weapon. But why -10 ACC and not -12? Hm, weird... You should get +2 ACC for the initial deflection check and also the fort check because of level 2. To check this, you could use a weapon with overbearing and see if the "prone on crit" effect which also gets rolled against fort works the same - or if it gets the +12 ACC. Could also be that this is a bug. Not unlikely, right?

I can't stand that place. Or let's say I can't stand the whole vitriolic atmosphere. It seems to be full of self-aggrandizing, impudent and ostensibly omniscient wisenheimers with beastly manners who obviously suffer from bad breeding and a lack of marshall-slaps and rabbit punches. It's sad because I think most of them are also quite smart. But maybe I'm just too old, humorless and grumpy and smell like mould cheese, who knows... Sorry for the rant - I'm sure there are also supernice people there, so please don't feel offended if you are a member (or even a mod like Infinitron). This place feels like heaven compared to that. PS: I don't agree with some things in the review, but very thoroughly done.

No, it's smart.

Late game difficulty was laughable even in the original game without expansions. That has nothing to do with the WM I and II. Of course Thaos is even more laughable at lvl 16 than he is at lvl 12 - but if you scale up it's nearly the same level of lol. There are enough encounters in WM I and II that are very difficult even without scaling. But most "trashmob" fights are still supereasy compared to the beginning of the game where most fights are kind of tough (PotD). All in all there's not enough (or barely enough) XP in the early game and way too much in the mid game - you will hit lvl 12 (or 14 or 16) very early as a completionist. But all in all: yes, it's difficult to rebalance the main game if you slide some expansions in. But I think it's doable. The replay value is so much better if you expand the main game instead of adding a rather short sequel. I like to to builds, so it's obvious why I like the current approach better.

Me, too. Multiple times. I also like it very much that the expansions are exactly that: expansions of the main game, not a sequel. It gives you more items and abilities and talents which you can use in the whole big game and not only in short sequels. I would be really sad if Obsidian changed their approach to expansions.

Huh? Never missed those even with 12 mechanics. Must be a bug - or they got raised a lot.

I'm seldomly in need of a tank who engages dragons. Usually I charm and/or CC them so they don't hit that many times anyway. It's those encounters with a lot of annoying enemies (Lagufaeth for example) where a dedicated tank who will unstealth first can be really useful in order to take the heat and let the others do their things in the first seconds of a fight. Those seconds can be crucial.

Yes, and dual damage types is a lot more valuable than most people think. Also, Shatterstar is an early hammer with Annihilation, which is great for a rogue.

Of course a fighter with weapon & shield is more sturdy than a chanter. He has higher deflection, already starts with Constant Recovery and also higher endurance and health. The problem is that such a fighter will do nothing else while a chanter can give support, do CC, call summons or deal huge damage via chant or invocation. And after some levels the difference in sturdyness becomes less obvious as well.

Oh - cool. Never tried that. Removing stuff from your inventory also helps a bit (if it's really stuffed).

Yap, that's right nonetheless.

My favorite dual weapon setup for a rogue by the way is dual war hammers, not sabres.

Or just give him ok MIG, CON and INT and pick Veteran's Recovery. It really helps.

Higher INT mostly for bigger AoE (Zealous whatever aura, Sacred Immolation), better heals (Lay on Hands, Veteran's Recovery if you want to take it), longer buffs (Exhortations) and so on. It also influcences the AoE of the Outworn Buckler's "herald" enchantment should you want to use it. Also affects duration of sumoned weapons (Firebrand). Overall it's a pretty importatn stat for a paladin (unless you're using a very special build). I don't say you have to max it, hust that it's unusual to have low INT on a paladin. You only need RES for some dialogue options (which will not alter the course of the game or give you anything special that you can't get otherweise) and a bit of deflection and concentration. So, you don't have to max it either. You don't have to max anything actually. This paladin can work well with somewhat balanced stats.

He didn't say that. As far as I understood from previous information (streams) paladins and priests will have more than three subclasses - because every order/diety works like a subclass and there will be no base class. But of course this may have changed.

I still didn't send it. Will do soon, I promise!

Yes, I was talking about Path of the Damned. I can't really remember a playthrough with a rogue at Normal difficulty and I never played on Hard. So my advice may be bad if you're not playing on PotD.

If your INT is high (I guess it is) I can also recommend Hours of St. Rumbalt. Because Sworn Enemy, Zealous Focus and Flames of Devotion lead to a +42 ACC boost, crits with FoD are common. And Hours of St. Rumbalt will do extra damage on crit and also cause prone for a rel. long time (because of crit-prone can be paired with high INT). If you also put on a burning lash, pick the Merciless Hand (Doemenel), Intense Flames and Scion of Flame then the FoD attacks can get quite nasty. Another alternative with the same talents/abilities is Firebrand (Forgemaster's Gloves) which works very well with FoD and Scion of Flame. Tidefall is also very nice. Only thing is that its wounding damage will get spread over a longer period of time when you have high INT while it would get applied quickly with low INT (a bit weird). So, the DPS with Tidefall is highest if you have 1 INT. It's still a great weapon even for max INT characters though.

You mean Tidefall with dumped INT max MIG I presume? With Hours of St. Rumbalt you might want to have high(er) INT in order to prone-lock. Another nice alternative is Tall Grass with a rogue. You can attack from second row which means you can focus even more on offense and you won't drop down as much. By the way there is no "general" build. It depends a lot on your party composition. The dual sabre, all offense rogue might do a lot of dps on paper, but in the game he will go down so often that he might fall behind a more sturdier but less offensive build that can fight longer and thus deals more damage over the course of the game. You can make a squishy rogue sturdier by adding Veteran's Recovery - but this needs MIG and INT to be effective. I'm currently doing a 5 rogue 1 cipher playthrough with 5 different rogue builds: dual sabre spellbind build, riposte/strike build with Badgradr's Barricade, retaliation/missile build with Sura's Supper Plate/Starcaller, Backstab build with Tall Grass/Firebrand/Cape of the Master Mystic, Tidefall/Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection build with 1 INT/1 RES/max MIG/max CON, using Runner's Wounding shot as main attack ability. And funnily it's the Tidefall build which did the highest damage so far - by a big margin. Then follows the pike backstabber and then the dual sabre rogue (who has the additional advantage of Sunbeam 6 times per rest). This gives a hint how powerful Tidefall is. But it also shows that the max CON and the draining from Tidefall pay off. He has no other healing source. But he's as sturdy as the dual sabre rogue who has Veteran's Recovery.

Edér can pick Armored Grace which reduces recovery penalty. Also, when dual wielding you will be 50% faster. Take Two Handed Style as well and you will be hitting pretty fast in plate armor. Killing Maerwald before clearing the whole level is totally OK. You will not miss anything.