Boeroer

Dual wielding war hammers is good. You already named the reasons: great uniques, two damage types. Take Charge later on. It's superawesome - especially when dual wielding. When arriving at the target you will not only deal the "AoE in a line" crush damage of Charge, but also deliver a full attack. Most normal foes die instantly.

Do it!

That's true. And I love The Long Pain. They don't have the ACC and graze/crit issues (I guess), work in melee and ranged and work with nearly all monk abilites. Nowadays, I use it on every monk I play.

Spiritshifted Boar with maxed self heal can tank quite well while dealing tons of melee damage. But he needs more resting because of health issues. But since he needs to rest anyway because of spells that's ok. The other shifted forms also work, but the boar adds a bit more regeneration while doing additional wounding damage, too. But maybe the boar isn't exactly the type of animal that you would associate with hunting (ony as prey), so maybe the cat, bear or wolf fit better. With a weapon and shield approach (like my Batsh!t Crazy build), combined with the caster-centered CC like Returning and Relentless Storm and Moonwell (+10 to all defenses) a defensively build druid can actually tank like a boss. Druid's Starting Deflection is 20. That's good - for a caster. A druid with Hunting Bow (WF Peasant) when not shifted also works well. Of course the main source of damage will be his spells of his shifted form. I even did an unarmed approach (Novice's Suffering). I didn't want to waste Durgan Steel on weapons you only use when not shifted. It worked out pretty well. Since the druid doesn't have very high melee ACC the bonus from N. Suffering helps - and if he grazes he almost does the same damage as if he would hit or crit because of the weird mechanics of unarmaed damage + unarmed bonus damage. The bonus damage gets applied AFTER graze or crit modify the base unarmed damage (5-8 ). So your damage is very consistent. And you can take the same talents for both: fists and claws.

Yes, with the monk's fists the crit/graze thing is not bad at all. I was referring to normal unarmed damage (which the monk doesn't have). I don't think they will hotfix this - it's in the game from the beginning and some reports were made - nothing happened so far.

A right. The monk got a special treatment. No wonder Novice's Suffering generally sucks.

What about a druid? They are all about nature, and they even have a lvl 2 spell called "Taste of the Hunt". Druids are powerful and fun to play.

MIG also works for the dmg bonus of Transc. Suff. and Sandals by the way. Is unmodified unarmed damage 10-15? I thought it's lower. Like 5-8 or something, can't remember. You have to take into account that crits don't do as much damage with fists. The +0.5 crit modifier only works with the base damage of fists. Same is true for grazes. In the later game you will do more crits than grazes if you're not solo. They are crush only, while Bittercut has two damage types. But the biggest downside is that fists's ACC bonus don't apply to most abilitites of the monk: Torment's Reach, Flagellanth's Path, Force of Anguish - those will not get the ACC bonus. WHich is lame. They are still very good weapons (maybe the best for monk) for early and mid game.

Since the monk doesn't have that many dmg mods (like rogue, cipher or figher) the sabre nerf makes not much difference. And the lashes don't care if the overall damage comes from base damage or dmg mods. Fists have some accuracy issues - for example the ACC bonus of Transc. Suffering doesn't work with the AoE cone of Torment's Reach.

YOu can use potions of Infuse with Vital Essence to restore health without resting.

Cape of the Cheat only gives you Escape. If you plan to build a character around stealth/invisibility I would suggest a rogue with the Cape of the Master Mystic (1* inv. per encounter), with Shadowing Beyond (2/rest), Nightshroud (1/rest) and Feign Death (1/encounter). If you combine that with Backstab (+150% damage) and Sneak Attack (+50) you an deal some nice damage when attacking from stealth or invisibiliy. With this setup it's best to use heavy hitting weapons like an estoc or a great sword, not daggers. The number of attacks you can deal out of steakth/inv. is limited, so you want to hit as hard as you can with your weapon, not as fast as you can.

A melee wizard is viable and powerful, too. But if you want lower maintenance, then a ranged wizard is the better choice. Most of the time you will use different stuff for late game crafting - and you will also have plenty of it. So craft all you want. Amplified Thrust hits your ally without any check and bounces off to the nearest enemy - then the usual hit roll will occur. I don't consider it to be a very useful spell. Whisper of Treason for example is a lot better. Athletic only gives you a 1/encounter self heal which is kind of lame - esp. in the late game the healing is not noticeable. I ALWAYS skip it.

Will, Fortitude, Deflection and Reflex are "only" defenses. Your ACC + dice100 roll has to overcome those defenses. A roll can result in miss, graze, hit or crit. There is only one accuracy and it's the base of ALL your attacks. This is influenced by class and PER. It can get bonuses from using an ability (usually +1 per level, some abilities have additional bonuses) or from using a spell (usually +10 or +15) and also improves per level. And of course you can take talents that boost it for certain things - like weapon focus, marksman and so on. Whatch the combat log in the lower right of your screen and hover over things like "MySuperChar misses Xaurip Skirmisher". You will get more info that will tell you the ACC that was used for this roll as well as the defense it was rolled against and the damage reduction (if there was DR involved). So, tl;dr: there's only one ACC value and it's based on class, PER and level. Will, fortitude, reflex and deflection are your defenses.

Yeah fair enough. I also like to theorycraft - else I wouldn't have put that many builds into this forum. Let's emphasize on "too much" theory crafting. By too much I mean the point where you get frustrated because you can't figure out the optimal build for you and don't start to play at all. Caster + Sword & Board: if you don't plan to use ranged weapons on a regular basis (implements with Blast can be VERY strong) then yes: it's a good setup without drawbacks IF you choose small shields and don't mind the talent point you normally put into weapon & shield style. Small shields have no ACC malus. So they won't lower you hit chance of your spells. All other shields will cut your ACC by 4 (medium) or 8 points (large). You can use Quickswitch and use a large shield for max defense and switch to a small shield when casting - thus getting the best of two setups. But it's a ton of micro and usually not worth the hassle. About implements with Blast: note that certain things that normally only work on single targets work in an AoE if you use Blast. Those are spell chances on hit/crit like from the soulbound sceptre or The Golden Gaze, on-crit effects like stun on crit like The Rod of Pale Shades has, the Glittering Gauntlets daze in an AoE, Kalakoth's Minor Blights has a cascading effect with Blast and even Envenomed Strike turns into a very powerful AoE poisoning attack. That is one of the main reasons why most people choose an implement+blast setup with a wizard. It's powerful even if you don't use spells. Those things also work with Citzal's Spirit Lance by the way - it has the same AoE mechanic like Blast. But melee wizards (be it with a dual wielding or shield setup) can be a lot of fun because you have awesome self buffs and also some great spells that work best in melee or reach weapon range. After some levels they can also be very good tanks (as longas the buffa work), too.

Since you can always retrain in an inn, the answers for those questions don't seem to be crucial for a successful and enjoyable playthrough. A wizard can learn any spell not only from level-ups, but also from enemies' grimoires - which are plenty. You can even fill some grimoires with your current spells, retrain and pick different spells during level-up and then relearn from said grimoires. So, spell choice is not an issue. The only thing that will be fixed is race and background. And those don't have that much impact on your performance. If you have a certain idea for your wizard, try it and it will most likely work well. At the end of the day, a wizard is all about spells and spell choice - and those can easily be adjusted. A dual wielding wizard or a ranged implement wizard don't differ in spell power. If you want to play a melee wizard, focus a bit on self buffing your defenses via spells so that you don't get killed too quickly and that should be it. I honestly think you guys should just go and play the game and don't do too much theory crafting before. You are trying to plan a perfect play through and that won't happen, even if you read a ton of info. It will just prevent you from playing. Most of us here (the so called experts) read a bit about the basic mechanics and then just dove into the game. Don't torture yourself with too much planning.

Veteran's Recovery is even stronger than Fighter's Constant Recovery and it stacks with Ancient Memory/Beloved Spirits. Those effects work with healing bonuses from high MIG, items and survival. Let's say you have 15 MIG, a Belt of Bountiful Healing and 8 points of survival. Then you will get +80% healing from all sources except draining (isn't influenced). That makes the chanter the most powerful "Regeneration Guy". A fighter with Constant & Rapid Recovery as well as Cloak of the Tireless Defender (like the Engineer) is second to this. The chanter needs more talents for this though. But on the other hand his Ancient Memory also heals team members. All in all Veteran's Recovery is a good thing to make other classes sturdy like a fighter - if you can balance out eventual lower endurance and deflection. It's my number one talent for most front liners.

That's true - not for every build in the list, but there are some. But as you said: you can always start with another approach and retrain later.

Actually with Runner's Wounding Shots and also wounding weapons it's best if you have low INT. The amount of this very special DoT will be the same, but it will get applied more quickly. Higher INT only takes the exact same damage and spreads it over a longer timespan. So if you fear that the DoT of RWS takes too long you just have to dump INT. But this will screw your overall damage of Envenomed Strikes and also your Deep Wounds damage - because those profit from high INT.

Oh yeah. Forgot that. Please no skill improvement on usage. I really don't want to see that in PoE2. Urgh... For a classless system it has not enough talents to make excessive character building worthwhile. PoE offers more diversity (over all classes).

Depends. If the base damage is good enough lashes are also good without base damge mods (monk's fists, druid's claws/tusks/horns). But true: of course it's even better if you can combine both. However, monks can have Savage Attack, Two Hande Style (debateable if this is worth it) and Appr. Sneak Attack as well as stakable flanking/vicious bonuses from items and survival. If you use your monk as a flanker (or have a cipher with Phantom Foes in your ranks) and sum those dmg mods up and then add his nice lashes the overall damage gets pretty nasty.

That's because every fight feels like it's done while swimming in sirup. Ability use... massive cooldown starts... recovery takes forever... 10min later you defeated those two noname-trash-foes. Maybe the fights are faster when you don't choose PotD, but I doubt it. PotD in Tyranny so far seems to be supereasy by the way. I wonder what normal is like in Tyranny... What is the exact time of your cipher? I will edit the opening post accordingly with an entrance of your build, the encounter and the time it took (like Magrans Faithful (upscaled), Bountysucker (cipher), Raven Darkholme, <min>:<sec>). Or so...

There are some tools for Windows with which you can "decompile" (not really, but kind of) object bundles and stuff.

If you make your +/- points in comparison to PoE, then it's exactly the info that's asked for.

By the way: we should take the time without pauses. Some classes need a lot more pauses because they use more active abilities/spells than others. For some others proper positioning is key and so on. If we would take the overall time we would only see chanters and paladins as competitors I guess.

Nice work! Nice misses with the dominate, too.