Boeroer

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!

For me, the most powerful class is the priest - and not only in the support role. But all of them are pretty balanced now with the exception of rogue who falls behind a bit after mid game.

Just some sidenotes: DEX can be important fpr a chanter if you want to use invocations a lot. A chanter won't chant right after the use of an invocation because there will be a significant recovery time. This can be greatly reduced with high DEX. So let's say you want to spam Killers Froze Stiff as often as possible then you shouldn't dump DEX. If you plan to mostly use chants (like stacking Dragon Thrashed or Her Courage) and don't care about invocations then it's totally cool to dump DEX. Dropping MIG is indeed not good if you plan to use things that damage or heal (Dragon Thrashed, Come Sweet Winds, White Worms, Ancient Memory, Veteran's Recovery and so on). If you want to focus on summons, CC or support only (Aefyllath, Mercy and Kindness, Killers Froze Stiff, Sure Handed Ila...) then MIG can be dumped. Aefyllath is indeed a good phrase (as is Dragon Thrashed). It is especially good if you have a lot of casters, because - surprise, surprise - its lashes also apply to all non-DoT spell damage. Dragon Thrashed does a ton of damage of course, but you need high MIG and want to have high ACC for it to be really good. For Aefyllath you need no special stats at all. So it can be a great support phrase for a chanter with low MIG, DEX and PER (typically the stat spread of a pure tank).

You get 78 points and can spend it on 6 attributes. So Average Joe's average attribute score is 13. Totally doable and viable, also on PoTD.

True. Fighters don't necessarily need a lot of micro to be good while a monk sucks without it in most cases.

You're welcome. Sorry for the typos. I'm really bad with those smartphone touchscreen keyboards.

Nice! I know you chose the Belt of Chimes because of Concentration. But since you want to receive crits in order to trigger certain spell holdings you might want to look at the Girdle of Mortal Protection. It's description says "reduces critical damage by 27%" and people think "wtf? only 27%" - but if you look at it closely then you can see that 27% of 150% (crit damage) is actually ~110%. So if an enemy crits it means that he will only do 10% bonus damage instead of 50%. THis can be a big plus if you get pummeled by crits lot. Wht I didn't tet yet is if the whole damage roll (including things like Sneak Attack, Savage Attack and so on) is reduced by 27% if you receive a crit or only the base weapon damage + 50% crit bonus. Anyway - it's worth considering. I used it on my melee solo priest with a 2hander and it was better than a Blunting Belt for example.

I wouldn't say that. A fighter does decent single target dmg and disables - but you can't compare his overall dps to that of a monk. When I try out new class builds for PoTD solo and approach the Nalrend Bounty for testing it's nearly always the monk that shines and the fighter that fails. I don't blame my skills. In fact I think the monk is cooler with me because I found the most effective way (for me) how to use him - which can be tricky. Monks do have some awesome abilites that can break the difficulty. Fighters are cool in a party and Disciplined Barrage and Charge are supernice, but Charge comes so late while the monk gets his best stuff from lvl 1 to 7. All you need to do is to find the sweet spot between gaining enough wounds and not getting knocked out. But with Veteran's Recovery + healing bonuses it's usually easy to stay alive while receiving enough wounds. And because the monk often uses his special ability attacks rather than auto attacks the accuracy is not such a big deal since all abilites get +1 ACC per char level. That means Torment's Reach and Force of Anguish and so on all get +1 ACC per char level. Figher's Knockdown and stuff also get that, but he uses less special attacks per encounter than a monk does. What's totally right is that a high INT fighter can be one of the best scroll users and Envenomed Strike + Disciplined Barrage is indeed a great combo. Good recommendation! By the way a paladin with Zealous Focus & Sworn Enemy + Envernomed Strike can also do that nicely. Once had a dps Bleak Walker whith that and it not only fits mechanically, but also thematically.