Boeroer

Hi Josh & Aarik, thanks a lot for answering those questions and feeding us with infos. One thing though: looking through the said video I noticed how you guys answered a question about bashing shields: You answered something like that it's not supposed to be a big dps boost. One should use dual wieldung or two handers for that. A shield is suppoed to give you deflection and not dps. So far, so good, but I think you misunderstood: The thing is that bashing shields reduce the dps compared to normal shields! It seems you don't know about that (which is understandable). Bashing doesn't speed up your attacks - so instead of hitting things with your good and sharp sword every 2 seconds, you will alternate between sword's good damage and the low damage of bashing. You will do less dps than a guy who uses a regular shield! Let me put it this way: If you wield sword & shield and attack 10 times with that sword - it does 10 damage - you will do 100 damage in total, right? Now if you attack 5 times with the same sword and 5 times with a shield bash that does 3 damage, you will only do 65 damage (I made the numbers up to make it plain). In the same amount of time (because unlike dual wielding, using a bashing shield doesn't speed up your attacks) you will do less damage compared to a normal shield guy. The worst thing about this is that bashing also costs you enchantment slots. You basically pay for a dps loss. Bashing must at least cause the same amount of damage as your main weapon if you don't want to produce a dps loss compared to normal shields. This is difficult to achieve and also not very logical. So another way to upvalue bashing would be a stun- or prone-on-crit effect, a small push effect on hit/crit, disorienting on hit (basically like some unique weapons have), dazing or whatever comes to mind which would make bashing useful and not a gimpage. One could also think of an active ability like Knockdown like the Girdle of the Driving Wave has: Knockdown 1/encounter. All those stuff would be plausible and not hard to implement. Some of the PoE1 shields had things like that (or even way better), like Badgradr's Barricade or Dragon's Maw. The other bash shields would have been better if there weren't bashing on them at all. I hope you understand what I mean. Now you surely agree that something has to be done. It wasn't my question by the way. But a good one I think.

I think it's really great they mixed the expansions into the main game. That way you can decide where to go first and that way you can use all the new items and talents/abilities and so on right in the main campain. Upscaling makes sure that encounters don't become too easy. I see only disadvantages if you exclude an expansion from the main game and do like a small sequel instead of a real expansion.

The late bounties like Brynlod's and Magran's Faithful are the hardest encounters by far, but that's because there are a lot of powerful individuals, not necessarily one uberboss. For me it's way more easy to beat the Alpine Dragon than Magran's Faithful but I still think that the Alpine Dragon is one of the most powerful single enemies in the game. One of the most annoying chars for me is the fighter who's among the robbers who stole the crate of the smith of Gilded Vale. I like to do that quest rel. early and that guy has high level abilities like Unbending and just won't die if your level is too low. A neat solution is to lure the trolls to him, but still... a powerful foe. Lagufaeth Broodmothers can be very dangerous and my nemesis if I go to the WM early. Those Cleansing Flames, holy moly.

What do you mean exactly with auto heal? A priest has some spells for healing and there is an AI setting for priests that lets them heal automatically once party members' endurance is low. So, when you turn this priest's AI on you will have kind of auto healing. He also has spells which will emit a healing aura and a spell which will heal a party member once his/her endurance drops to a certain point. If you mean passive auras which heal your party members just by being around then no - a priest can't have that. All his healing powers need an activation. Be it a spell or an active ability. If you want other sources of healing you can look at the chanter (auto healing aura), the druid (healing over time in an area of effect - this sounds like something you're looking for) and the paladin (strong single ally heals).

Still not worth any skill points in my opinion.

Sure it's worth posting.

I really like that Black Jacket thing.

If somebody can summon beasts, it's the ranger. Druids already can summon certain spirits. Since they have also ties to primordials (form of the delemgan, summons oozes) I would say that that's the type of creature a druid should summon.

I'm pretty confident that one of the chanter's subclasses is a specialist for summons. Maybe they'll even do a necromancer. Just look at some of the creepy phrases and invocations. But when we look at Concelhaut and his apprentices, it may also be that wizards might get such a subclass. All of those wizards in the tower except the vithrak were doing stuff with vessels. Two of them clearly did things that one could name necromancy.

I never said it's a problem. But OBS might feel that it all gets quite boring if every char who gets his hands on weapons like Redeemer or Steadfast etc. picks at least one level of barb just to get carnage for more procs.

And chants can also be seen as incantations, not necessarily jolly tunes a bard would play to cheer up the crowd - I mean the "spells" of the chanter are named "invocations" for a reason. Don't necromancers use mysterious incantations to summon the undead? Totally fits. Don't reduce chanters to "singing". Look at the sinister Death Godlike guy at Magran's Fork. He's a psychopath serial killer chanter who's personal theme evolves around killing and death. Not quite the bard type... There might be a reason why you can't hear chanters sing in the game, even if they are chanting phrases.

That's because those items are used automatically. Ingrediences are used automatically when you enchant equipment, brew potions, write scrolls or cook food. You can't do anything else with them. Same for quest items: they are used automatically when you advance in a quest. You can't do anything else with them. Some of them can be converted via quest: from quest items to "real" items that you can equip, for example Osric's Family Breastplate or some amulets or the March Stell Dagger. As long as they are in "quest item mode" you can't equip them or anything, not even sell them. Once you solve the quest in a special way you can gain the quest item as normal item. Most quest items are just quest items though. They are only good for advancing in a quest. Keys also fall under that category by the way. That's why you can't do anything with those items. It's no bug or anything. It's just like the game handles those items so that you don't confuse them, lose them or sell them.

Erm... yes. Of course. That was the whole point of my post. Not it wasn't patched. In fact, you can still have higher proc chance with Carnage, Blast, Torment's Reach, Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows as well as with multi-projectile weapons like Blunderbuss and Golden Gaze. What they patched only recently was that some special attacks like Knockdown (from Girdle of the Driving Wave) and Envenomed Strike worked in an AoE when you combined them with blast effects (Spirit Lance, implements' blast). What I was saying is that some combos (you can think of are in PoE2) may be just too good to not multiclass (even if destroys your build from a roleplaying perspective) - and may it even be only 1 level. I'm curious how OBS will solve this. I'm not saying they can't and I'm not saying that they need to exterminate such things completely. Just curious.

Litanies are single ally only. They can protect you or an ally from those disables which can't be countered by a prayer. Prone and stun included. It's true that there's no scroll for that.

For me, a rogue+fighter is more like a duelist or swashbuckler. Barb+rogue sounds more like marauder.

I would be happy to support ship, island and also an inn (nice idea) on that island. Or without island - or without ship - whatever you guys come up with. The thing is I can't keep up with all that communication that's going on right now at these forums. Too much to read. And posts come too fast to keep up. Just know that you can always contact me if you need support or/and a vote for those things.

I'm a bit curious how OBS wants to solve obvious problems like: Everybody who wields a weapon with spell chance will take at least 1 level of barb in order to get carnage - in order to pimp the proc chance. Damage of carnage will not matter, it's just about the amount of hits you generate per swing. It would gimp you if you didn't and stay true to your class. Every weapon with spell chance cries for things like Carnage, Torment's Reach, Blast, Twinned Arrows and/or Driving Flight. Think about the Golden Gaze in PoE 1. It would improve the proc chance tremendously if you could have Driving Flight combined with Blast - even if you only take one level of wizard since damage of blast doesn't matter. Same with Steadfast + Paladin + Barbarian/Monk in order to proc Sunlance all the time. I don't say that we see those weapons or spell chances in PoE2 - I just want to point out where the pitfalls are when you combine proc chances with multiclassing. I guess there will be a ton of exploits to be identified and removed in the beta. Because devs can't by any means foresee which weird and gamebreaking combos players come up with. Remember the Jolting-Touch barb or the retaliation barb? Or the multi-retaliation cipher prodigy? Only recently they patched Envenomed Strike so that it doesn't work with blast effects any more. Took a lot of time to find all those things. But for me that's also fun - so I'm looking forward to multiclassing.

What the heck do you mean? Azzuro appears for his initial petition, then shows up every now and then to sell you stuff (via the stronghold GUI). You don't even need to be at the stronghold to buy his stuff. He's not like the others merchants you have to go to in order to buy. Only for his first petition you have to see him in your throne room.

True, but why don't you click on the trap first? The party member with the highest mechanics skill will go and disarm the trap. The others will wait. Not only will the trap disappear from your path, it will also show up in your inventory so you can use or sell it. But it would have been easy to include discovered traps into the path finding. That world have been better, I agree.

Do you really need those numbers to determine how well your build works? Usually if it feels good it is good.

Tyranny wasn't a bad game. But combat and mechanics in Tyranny were pretty lame. Char building was disappointing, too.

Shielding Flames stacks with everything and therefore should stack with itself. But I never tested. Inspiring Triumph is the same. Shielding Touch doesn't stack with Reinforcing Exhortation for example. So I'm 99.9% sure it doesn't stack with itself. Reinforcing Exh. the same. All heraldic shields' (Outworn Buckler, Little Savior) auras stack. So if you'd clone Little Savior and pick up Outworn Buckler you could create a +15 to all defenses aura which stacks with everything.

It should, but it works with Dragon Thrashed and also one or two invocations.

Come on: Chanter + Barbarian = Rock Star *smashes his instrument in a carnage*

As far as I understand what Josh explained in the video, there's absolutely no difference between fighter/priest and priest/fighter.