Boeroer

"boots of complaint"

Yes, something like this. And Illathid's suggestion was also nice: a short list of what was plundered. This can be used to "flesh" it out and can also be fun. Not too fancy and weird stuff though. You don't necessarily even give a name, a description could also be ok. Maybe sometimes the victims just didn't give names when they fought back and resisted being robbed. Something like - Blueish, black bearded orlan slaver from Readceras: 11 gladiator slaves of different race, gender and build, including equipment - Chatty Death Godlike with horns, origin unknown: brigandine, a pistol and a ledger with some weird writings about death and light. Obviously nuts - Captain F. Luflé from the Vaillian Republics: 250 gold ducs, fine rapier and pistol with golden inlays and a white, powdered whig - Jerrek Krûger, barbarian from The Living Lands: fine shield and spear and a rusty armor as well as 20 exquisite bear hides could give enough hints, is fun to read (I guess) and wouldn't break immersion. And if it's in a ledger that's lying around somewhere... Some forum names around here are not too bad actually. Of course you can always come up with a fitting ingame name. There are some examples of names in the wiki for most PoE cultures. As for the amount that would be needed to get in there: no idea? Maybe 20$? Just my first impulse.

If you want to keep low DEX you could consider to take an Island Aumaua and spent your two Flames of Devotions uses for two shots with two arquebuses, switching after the first shot. This way low DEX doesn't matter and you can still do incredible burst damage. One handed fast weapon is not the best choice - they hit like wet noodles if you have no means to reduce enemies' DR. You could also pick up a two hander as a backup weapon. Once encounter starts you will present yourself with a two hander (= lower deflection and higher disengagement damage - for example you could buy the Spectacular Spetum which has marking and guarding - perfect weapon for a paladin), dealing two FoD hits with it. Once the enemies took you as bait and engaged you can switch to shield and become supertanky. Usually they won't leave you then.

If you don't get hit at all you don't need CON. My Golden Dragon barb tank has only 3 CON. It's because he doesn't get hit at all once his buffs & debuffs are set up. But it has it's uses, especially for meaty monks and barbarians who don't want to have high deflection. Since those classes have a bigger endurance and health pool anyway the percentage based bonuses of CON work even better with them (like Jerek already said). And it also boosts your fortitude which is one of the most important defenses. I once did a solo run with a 20-MIG-20-CON-barb and it worked well. So much fortitude (also with Greater Frenzy ) and so much health... So I don't think it's a useless stat at all. Just depends on the character.

If you like Berath then a priest of Berath, focused on maxed out MIG and using Tidefall may be fun for you. Had a lot of fun with him during a solo PoTD run. Difficult at first, but very powerful later. Good melee damage, too. Monk is very powerful and has great tools for soloing. You don't need a godlike race to be awesome. Even starts with awesome abilities and makes the early solo game a lot easier. Chanter: skill for tankyness and play until lvl 9. Use chokepoints and Come Sweet Winds + White Worms until you reach lvl 9 and then use Dragon Thrashed only. It stacks and will kill everything around you very quickly. Easypeasy but can get boring. No summons involved. If you need a +12 ACC bonus just switch to a one handed setup during appliamce and back to shield - since the one handed bonus applies to Dragon Thrashed and also some invocations.

The even higher bonus (15%) of Gauntlets of Swift Action stacks with everything though. I see a pattern there... ...NOT!

One Handed Style only applies if you have nothing in your left hand. Once you put a shield or other weapon in it, the style gets deactivated. It used to work with shields, but it got patched. So, no additional hit-to-crit conversion for Badgradr's Barricade. What does work with the Thrust of TV once it gets released is Deep Wounds and Penetrating Shot.

Well at least this discussion generates some attention.

It's also great for solo play if you need to kite. Especially with Long Stride + Boots of Speed.

"Lord Illathid" for example sounds quite lore friendly to me. It's not like "Mister Potatohead" like you could find in the CRPG Guestbook in PoE1. Could easily be a seafaring noble who got robbed - I mean Lord Illathid, not the Potatohead...

The White Spire is an estoc but doesn't get +6 ACC from Weapon Focus: Adventurer.

Why don't you watch it on twitch.tv/obsidian? There's a menu option called "Videos" where you can find them all.

Yes, it is the case. Stunning, overbearing and spell chance weapons work very well with Torment's Reach. Also: very nice synergy with Enervating Blows and Apprentice's Sneak Attack (and a rogue). You can of course prefer a ranger over a monk with The Long Pain becaue of several reasons - they are quite different. But if you're looking for the highest sustained ranged single target damage there's nothing better than TLP in my opinion. It's like arquebus shots (with better crits) without noteworthy recovery and without loading time. Basically a gatling gun.

Hehe, I know what you mean. We could discuss about things like "you have to give at least 10$ in order to be mentioned as 'victim' of the BIB" or something. I mean why would the BIBs write down every poor guy they robbed 1 copper from - the paper & ink would be more expensive than that. I agree that giving 1$ only in order to get mentioned in the game is pretty lame and feels like skimming the milk. But maybe for some dedicated but "poor" people 5$ already is a lot of money to be spent on such "unimportant" things (compared to food and rent and medicine and so on). It's tricky...

Did send another batch by the way...

Sure, sure - all true. But would a book with up to 200 names in it truly hurt? Or a crew member list or whatever? I mean nobody would be forced to read it and it also wouldn't break immersion if the "pirate" names are not too goofy. Could also be a list of names who the BIBs robbed. I mean this crew is literally taking our money - so why not find a list of individuals the BIBs stole from? I know we talked about this before. But honestly is it such a big thing to ask for? I'm not asking for me - but when I think about those people who stint themselves for being able to contribute to this crew I feel like they deserve at least some form of mentioning (that shouldn't produce a lot of work on OBS's side of course).

Update on the funny observation: - 201 people voted - 45 people donated 2967$ If the 156 people who voted but didn't donate (yet) will give 10$ each we would be there. Sounds not too hard. It's doable folks! I think a lot of people would like to get some kind of recognition for donating - which I can understand. So maybe a book/ledger/whatever with names of the (former) crew members (with lore-friendly names) would motivate a bit. I know we can't make promises. Or maybe we could ask for another unique forum rank title or a small addition to the BIB badge or something with what you can show off a bit.

Josh said more than once that they designed the classes in a way that they can be used with different builds and with differenent approaches. So they clearly didn't want to limit the monk to be an unarmed martial artist class. Other hints are that there are weapons like the Greenstone Staff which can only be soulbound to wizard, druid and monk. In PoE, the only thing all monks have in common (lore wise) is that they all believe "that combat is the ideal path for pursuing their particular brand of mortification of the flesh". Of course you can choose to dislike monks who use weapons and also wear plate or whatever. The thing with The Long Pain is that even if you only use them in melee range (because you don't like the idea of flying fists for whatevr reason) they are better than the original fists. But they don't work with Turning Wheel. So if you want to use that you might want to skip TLP. The problem with having fun with your char is that if your build is ineffective and can't do anything right it can also be frustrating and no fun most of the time. There might be exceptions though. And once you realize that your Force of Anguish with fists doesn't hit while the Force of Anguish with sabres does you might feel disappointed. I'm pretty sure this ACC issue with all fists is an oversight by the developers.

The thing is that also the Torment's Reach cone will have reduced ACC with fists while a enchanted weapon will apply its ACC bonus to the cone as well. Once Durgan steel is there there's no question that Bittercut is better than fists. Not only faster than before but also higher crit damage and a crit conversion. But of course fists are still great because you don't need any resources and still have awesome dps with autoattacks. And you'll have it right from the beginning. And you don't need to clone a weapon for that, too. I would only clone Bittercut because I find it cool - not because it's the most powerful choice for cloning. By the way I cloned Shame or Glory lately for a dual wielding Darcozzi in order to provide max marking and other ACC bonuses (+40 passive stackable ACC for your flanking buddy). Pretty sick. And yeah sorry - The Long Pain doesn't work with Turning Wheel. I meant Torment's Reach - because of the Full Attacks that also help with speed and dps. Will edit that... I now wonder if Novice's Suffering would be cool with a dps paladin (maybe Goldpact or Bleak Walker) and his two FoD hits which can add a lot of lash damage and don't use weapon dmg mods... You wouldn't need high ACC because grazes and crits would do nealry similar damage. Non-monks have even lower unarmed base damage while the bonus is a bit higher. High MIG would also be good here. Hm...

Or rich. Or both.

It totally depends how you want to play those. Melee or ranged, beefy or glass cannon, damage dealing or crowd control or a mix... and so on. If you specify your idea of your character we will be able to give more sophisticated advice. Especially the Wizard has so many spells that can be totally awesome in the right situations that it's very difficult to give a general answer.

It would be very cool if they had drop traps, meaning if they could place ordinary traps in combat very quickly. And/or if smoke cloud did something useful. I mean it does cause distraction, but for such a high level ability that's pretty lame. A more chillfoggish approach (without the damage part) but with an initial short stun (like from a flash bang) and a following blind debuff every few seconds until the cloud dissipates would have been better. The "charging" thing with a rogue can be quite fun if you use Shadow Step and Escape. You can rush in, deliver a blow or two, automatically retreat, then return with Escape and finish. Usually this messes up the enemies movement a lot.

Additionally, with fists vs Bittercut you have to consider the following weird things: - Transcendent Suffering's damage bonus is not base damage. So Savage Attack, Apprentice's Sneak and also crits only apply to the unarmed base damage. Livegood118 did that - just explaining here. - the ACC-bonus of Transcendent Suffering will not apply to ability attacks! Force of Anguish, Torment's Reach and so on will be done with reduced ACC compared to auto attacks. - Bittercut profits from Spirit of Decay twice: first of all it gets +20% to weapon's base damage which will raise the lash damage, too. Lashes are based on the actual physical damage roll you will do including all dmg mods. And then the lash itself will get boosted, too. Those things lead to the situation that Bittercut is even better if you don't have durgan steel yet. Mainly because of the two damage types and the ACC issue. With the Long Pain it's different: the base damage is very high since there's no "on-top" flat damage bonus like with Tr. Suff. So crits and all other dmg mods will increase the damage A LOT. BUT the ACC issue is the same as with Tr. Suff. But since the auto attacks of the Long Pain are used more often it's not that bad. The fun thing about The Long Pain is that not only Two Weapon Style and Swift+Lightning Strikes and Turning Wheel Tirment's Reach and all most of the other stuff works, but also Sure handed Ila. We're talking about arquebus shots without the crit damage reduction with 0 recovery. Doemenel talent works especially well here, too! As a bonus they also have a higher ACC bonus than melee fists. Not to mention the advantage that they work in melee or ranged combat which lets you attack even faster because you don't have to move in order to attack. So basically it's Long Pain > Bittercut > fists in my opinion. That's the reason I always take the Long Pain if I want an unarmed monk. The Witch Doctor build I did was so freakingly powerful in terms of weapon damage that I don't want to miss The Long Pain any more.

The game AI somehow evolved and realized that Rhymer's Summon is one of the worst talents in the game and removed it for you so that you feel motivated to retrain and pick something else...

Nearly 60% and a lot of days to go - great stuff!