Boeroer

Yes, I totally agree - that is a common "problem" of the monk in western RPGs. To be honest I also skipped monks for the first several PoE playthroughs because of that. However in PoE - if one can ignore that image - they can be a lot of fun. Now one of my most favored classes. Rangers - not so much I'm afraid. Doesn't mean they are bad - but they don't appeal to me because they are quite limited in the ways you can build them. I guess the subclasses in PoE will drastically change that.

Moon Godlikes' racial ability is very powerful - I mean if you compare it to available headger in PoE1. I don't use them a lot because I don't like the looks too much but they are powerful. I used Fire Godlikes quite often because you can do a some nice shenanigans with the burn retalition - because it scales with level and leads to insane retaliation damage if you combine it with certain class abilites. Examples: - monk: Battle Forged retaliation with Scion of Flame, Turning Wheel, Lightning Strikes and Blood Testament Gloves will have +20% base damage and lashes of +60% burn, +25% shock and +20% raw. This leads to retaliation strikes which do 100-150 burn damage with Battle Forged alone. Add a Flame Shield potion and other retaliation items as well as Rooting Pain and it gets totally crazy. This monk can just stand there and do nothing and still kills everything that hits him in melee (as long as it's not immune to fire). - barbarian: One Stands Alone and Blooded work with Battle Forged. Add Scion of Flame, Firebrand and Barbaric Retaliation and he can also be a powerful retaliation tank as the above monk. Both have the advantage of very high endurance and health so that the 50% endurance is not that tricky. - cipher: used to generate focus via Battle Forged. Now it's all nerfed and doesn't work anymore - but the combo of Ring of Searing Flames (Combusting Wounds) + all the retaliation you can stack + Pain Link is still very powerful. - priest: can reach very high MIG which results in high Battle Forged damage. Plus: Fire Godlike priest of Magran fits nicely. Meh: priests' endurance and health are quite bad and you shouldn't plan to use Battle Forged a lot because you will have to rest all the time because of low health. Death Godlike I seldomly use. I like the combo of Death Godlike and chanter or priest of Berath - but to be honest the racial ability is not good enough to justify the loss of headgear. Nature Godlike: same basically. Nature Godlike Stag Druid or Nature Godlike stag ranger are nice concepts - stylistically - but the racial ability is very underwhelming. It stacks with everything though, but it would have been better if it triggered at 75%. Or if it worked like Fighting Spirit (humans). The term "Wellspring of Life" suggests that there's healing involved - which is not the case. An inherent regeneration like those of a trollhide belt that scaled a bit would also have been awesome. Bird Godlike: ok, the racial ability is totally bonkers, but Pallegina makes up for this with her awesome Wrath of the Five Suns. I like her very much.

No, the rogue with the BotEP can also wear plate if he uses a potion of Alacrity for example - giving him 0 recovery like the dual wieder has. The dual wielder could also gulp that potion, but it wouldn't do anything for him because he already has 0 recovery. Anyways - having higher DR is of course benefical, but it's not relevant when speaking about dps. So, the best melee dps option in the late game can be two hander. If it's the best option overall is debateable and also heavily depends on your class, your enemy and your and party setup and what gear is available - if you like consumables or not and so on. But the best possible melee dps option late in the game is a two hander. The big advantage of dual wielding is that before the late mid game to late game - where speedups like durgan steel become available - you will have better dps most of the time if you use a class which has no good speed ability (rogues, fighters, papadins and so on) and you don't want to drink Alacrity potions or use drugs. And of course if you use a rogue who takes all the strike abilites - then I would totally recommend dual wielding because it should always result in higher damage output (first strike blinds, secnds strike already has Sneak bonus and so on).

Right - and it's also benefical to use Blood Thirst as well if you are not already at 0 recovery with Bloodlust (for example if you use a weapon without speed enchantment - like Drake's Bell with maximum DR penetration setup). After HoF you will have no recovery because you killed at least one enemy, you can follow up with Barbaric Blow which will most likely kill another enemy - again no recovery - and then hack away with auto attacks which are sped up via Bloodlust. Blood Thirst can close the gap between weapons with and without speed enchantment(s). Of course - if you already have 0 recovery then taking Blood Thirst is nonsense in order to speed up your weapon attacks. But there might be reason you want to keep it: If you want to use attacks that are not related to your weapons - like Dragon Leap, Echoing Shout, spell binding gear or scrolls: those spell like abilites which don't use your weapons' enchantments also work with Blood Thirst. If you kill enemies with a Dragon Leap, a Jolting Touch or a Fireball or whatever you will also have 0 recovery - while the speed enchantment of your weapon will do nothing in this case. Casting some "spells" with 0 recovery in full plate is powerful.

That is a misconception. Monks are good with fists, but they are equally good or even better with weapons and especially with heavy armor in the earlier stages of the game. On-crit weapons with overbearing or stunning as well as weapons with spell chances work with the AoE cone of Torment's Reach for example. So like a barbarian you can deliver CC or other effects in an area of effect while doing a lot of damage. I guess people think they have to play a monk as you described and are repelled by the "martial arts" thang. But you can easily play him in other ways and he will be as good or better. May people found him to be too micro-intensive and it's true: the usual monk needs a lot of micromanagement to be effective - just like casters. But then he's the best melee class in my opinion.

The monk is exactly that: a powerful, active melee character with a lot of (AoE) ability uses and very strong CC options per encounter. Yet this also didn't please a lot of people because they couldn't find out how to use him properly. Guess you can't please them all. There were no dedicated talents for melee rangers in PoE1, it's true. Only ones which worked ranged as well as melee at best. Something around spears or pikes would have been cool - like a boar hunter or generally a big game hunter.

The attack animations of two handers and larger one handers have the exact same length - with or without potion. The speed of attack animations only changes with DEX. Potions and other buffs only influence recovery time. Recovery is also the same with two handers or single larger one handers. Dual Wielding will reduce recovery only. Attack animations remain unchanged. So if you can tell those things by watching the attack animations you may be victim of an optical illusion. Which is understandable because the two handers are longer and seem to be slower. But counting frames shows that they are not. Once the recovery of two hander and dual wielding is the same, both variants attack with the exact same speed.

If you have a rogue or fighter with decent MIG and lowish INT (like Edér for example): those are also good with Tidefall. Pallegina - due to her lame MIG score and the fact that she has no big damage bonuses other than lashes (which don't help the wounding damage) - might not be the best character to give. Tidefall for Maneha would def. be a better pick. She can have high attack speed even with two handers (Frenzy, Bloodlust und Blood Thirst stack) and she has high MIG and not too high INT and she can stack some nice damage bonuses like Savage Attack, One Stands Alone and Blooded (altogether 60%). Plus: the wounding via carnage makes up for the fact that quite a bit of physical damage gets eaten up by enemies' DR because carnage suffers from a damage malus. Aaand she would do wounding in an AoE (Cleansing Flame jumps!) and also drain a lot of endurance via carnage - which is cool.

That - and that they don't know themselves how the stuff works. Neat project MaxQuest. Also pleases the eye. Can't wait to see it finished!

I guess - because otherwise you can't skip the recovery of WotFS. Shot and the fiery balls have to hit at roughly the same time. So it's also impossible to time if you're too near. At max range it's doable though. But although it's a neat effect it's way to much fuzz to be exploitable.

Does something magical happen once you have 6 party members?

You are right. That part is indeed very tricky since Runner's duration and also that of wounding is rather short. That's why I casted Shining Beacon, then CF (also not too long) and followed up with a Runner's Wounding Shot (or Envenomed Strike) with Tidefall. Still tricky. That way you have decent runner's damage (not the max, but good) or posion DoT and wounding applied with one strike. But that was because of my solo run. It would indeed be way less fuzz to apply DoTs with other party members. So you might as well skip Runner's altogether and give Tidefall to a party member while you use another great sword (as I said - Firebrand with high MIG and Scion of Flame is also very nice. Or try Rumbalt - with Inspiring Radiance + Devotions you can crit a lot). Yeah, if you want a vessel slayer I would also say Berath fits best.

Ok, you can reproduce it with Wrath otFS - but timing is critical. So far no luck with missiles... Also should work with all other arbalests since all of them are overbearing (prone only though).

It's an integral part of the PoE1 ranger, yes. Why are you linking to a D&D page? PoE is not D&D and I'm happy about that. Not that I dislike D&D, it's just another game. I'm totally fine with the Ghost Heart Lodge ranger. A lot of people complained in the PoE char build forum that they don't really want to use an animal companion but focus more on the ranger. The Ghostheart is a good approach in my opinion. You can have your pet running around if you summon it, but you can also completely skip that. And since it's a subclass and we'll have three of them - plus the base class - there's anough room for other fancy experiments around "rangering".

...well that rhymes quite nicely doesn't it? Hi! I just discovered a weird albeit funny bug: when you use Pallegina's Wrath of the Five Suns and quickly switch to Aedrin's Wrecker and command an FoD-shot on the same target BEFORE the five suns crash into the target - then every ball of fire will cause prone and stun when it crits. It seems that the balls of fire inherit the properties of Aedrin's Wrecker in some way. Most likely the same problem we had with offensive auras from items (fear aura from Executioner's Hood, Harbinger aura from Redfield) that would cause prone if you used Knockdown the same time when the effect pulsed. Maybe you remember. This was fixed some time ago though. So now you have six chances in total to cause a crit (5 balls, one shot) and then two chances (=two rolls: prone AND stun) to disable an opponent after that crit happens. These are 18 hit rolls altogether which also get displayed in the combat log. At the moment it looks like that it's a guaranteed disable. Sworn Enemy + FoD + Zealous Focus lets you crit anything if you have that many chances. Now I have to see if this also works with Minor Missiles from Spell Binding, missile spells from scrolls and Prestidigitator's Missiles - plus Aedrin's Wrecker.

ROFL - now I spilled my cucumber sandwich all over the keyboard.

Sure sure - I know. All good. The "Yes, thanks" was not ironical or something. I just wanted to differentiate a bit and show that the answer is not easy and also depends where you are in the game (besides other factors you mentioned).

Yes, thanks. But to be fair: this is a late game setup as I already mentioned. Dual wielders have a much easier time to reach 0. Not that they have to - just in order to increase DPS to the max. Now away from pure dps and towards overall power and usefulness: Two handers get the more powerful uniques early in the game while dual wielding gets you to high attack speed really quickly. Maybe that's why they placed the good two handers in those areas where you can get them early, who knows?

Cool. One thing though: Runner's Wounding shot does raw damage based on your physical damage you rolled. So optimally you would use a weapon which has the highest damage per hit possible. I normally used Tidefall itself after casting Cleansing Flame because that way you could apply two DoTs which get double damage at the same time and do good damage with Runner's Wounding Shot itself. I did basically the same thing but used some other talents because I didn't take the vessel slaying route (which is totally fine): Envenomed Strike because of Cleansing Flame. High MIG and INT are very good things for Envenomed Strike and it's easy to cast Cleansing Flame afterwards because Env. Strike takes a long time to apply completely. An even better alternative would be to have it on another team member I have to admit. I played the priest solo and thus had to use it myself. I also used Savage Attack because it can be beneficial for the wounding damage - as high MIG is. And since I used Aggrandizing Radiance like you did - it stacks with everything - I also added Inspiring Radiance for the +10 stackable accuracy which I think is neat. This means that I couldn't fit in Scion and Sanctifier. But those are all matter of taste. Sanctifier with Bartender's Ring is also a nice "undead hunter" approach - and my beloved Envenomed Strike doesn't work on vessels anyway. So good decisions from your side I would say. Sidenote, just in case you didn't know: Scion of Flame doesn't work with Shining Beacon or Holy Radiance because those are DoTs. It works perfectly well with Pillars of Flame and all other direkt burn damage spells of course - so absolutely viable pick. Since you have Scion of Flame you could also test if Firebrand is a good alternative before you can get Tidefal. It it very good for Runner's Wounding Shot and works with the Scion talent. It doesn't add any DoT effect of course. Edit: I mistyped Shining Beacon as Shining Bacon and now I'm really hungry. By the way: I used a boreal dwarf and took the Maefolc Skull to get the "Berath Vibe" - but Death Godlike with aumaua body shape and a fat two hander looks totally badass.

Yeah good no problem. The dual wielder gets those buffs, too, if you want - even if he doesn't need them to reach 0 recovery. Why not. Now we have apples for apples... So now step by step - and we're only looking at dps: - Once the two hander guy (with all the stats, buffs and items) attacks as fast as a dual wielder with the same buffs and items - he does more dps. Do you agree? - You can't be faster than 0 recovery - even if you have more attack speed bonus than you need. So when a two hander reaches 0 recovery he will be as fast as a dual wielder. Do you agree?

Please understand this: you can't get faster than 0 recovery. You may want to be all fair and also give the dual wielder those buffs like Frenzy and so on. You can add Frenzy + other speed buffs to a dual wielder, sure - but it's of no use at some point because he can't get any faster than O recovery while the two hander catches up to that. And once (quite late in the game) he did that he does always more dps - Full Attacks aside. That's the whole point that I and others (including Kaylon I guess) are trying to make. Before that the dual weapon setup does more damage against low to mid DR foes, that's right. Kaylon didn't write in favor of any position - he posted a test result - showing how a two hander can be as fast as a dual wielding setup (and thus doing more dps). That undergirds what I was saying. I have the feeling that I have to elaborate a lot because you don't get what I mean. In fact it is quite simple but your comments are not very helpful.

I'm looking forward to playing a gun ranger/priest of magran. Maybe Powder Burns will still be in the game...

I don't make it personal and I don't mislead. In fact I'm trying to stay focused and not to beat around the bush. I'm also trying to avoid sarcastic comments. You should read my posts again. You will see that I don't make any insulting or misleading comments nor do I attack you personally. And I don't shout either. You are not limited to potions. A barbarian with Frenzy and Bloodlust (and maybe also Blood Thirst) could achieve 0 recovery without potions for example: being as fast with a two hander as with dual weapons. So it's possible (and not too difficult in the late game) to out dps dual wielding with a two hander. That was your question and it got answered. I'm not trying to win anything, I'm just rying to answer your question and to show you that there is no simple answer. What I also said is that it' way easier to achieve 0 recovery (earlier) with dual wielding and pointing out other advantages of dual wielding - supporting parts of your position as well. I'm sorry that you can't see that I'm trying to be neutral here. But your initial statement was very strong: "not suitable/no way/how is it possible". Several users, including me, showed that it can be suitable and also is possible. Maybe for you and your playstyle it is not the case, but that doesn't mean that two handers are not viable or can't compete. No need to get huffy I'd say.

Eh? Why is a melee oriented ranger with an animal companion taking away somethig? You can already do this in PoE1 and it's quite unique because of the "tandem"-mechanics of ranger & pet, flanking an enemy. I made a build for it and it works really well - and is totally different from rogues or fighters or whatever. Nobody said there should be a subclass that focuses on melee AND have no animal companion. We willl have one base class and three subclasses by the way.

Your question: "how is that possible"? The answer is: That's the answer. If you attack as fast as a dual wielder (meaning you strike as often in a given timespan) you will have "out dpsed" a dual wielder bwecause your damage er hit will be higher. So there is a way - and it's not that quirky or weird. Quite simple. I don't see the need for shadowboxing. I'm not in favor of two handers or dual wielding. Both have their pros and cons. Simply saying "X is better than Y" or "Hours of St. Rumbalt is not suitable for a rogue" doesn't work in this game and you can see why. There are too many ifs (build, enemy's DR, actual attack speed, buffs, damage types, unique enchantments, party composition and so on).