Boeroer

Maybe only an UI glitch.

Huh? That's weird!

First of all, drink a lot of ale. Then go to the small room with the stairs in the left of the throne room or into the bed chamber at the right. Use the door as chokepoint so that only Edér has to tank with weapon and shield. Use Kana with his Movement+ chant to pull the enemies to that chokepoint and retreat behind Edér. Edér closes the gap in the doorway. Edér: Once enemies are blinded (see Aloth's Chillfog) use scrolls of Fan of Flames like there's no tomorrow. Then tank & spank, maybe summon pets from figurines or drink a defensive potion. Give him back his armor for this fight. Use his Knockdowns wisely. Don't move! Don't go into the Chillfogs! Aloth: 3 Chillfogs on top of each other in front of Edèr, then Eldrtich Aim, then Combusting Wounds(!). Then 2 times Arcane Assault, then fire from the backrow (mages and priest). I hope you have Blast. Durance: Blessing, Consecrated Ground, Iconic Projection if Edér gets wobbly knees - target it so that is passed through the doorway and hits as many foes as possible, too. If you have Inspiring Radiance (which I strongly recommend), cast this at the beginning, too. Its 10 ACC bonus stacks with everything. Don't use it for healing, use it for buffing ACC. Then fire from the backline (mages and priests). If Edér is about to collapse for the second time (after the first time he will get revived because of his armor), cast Withdraw on him! Enemies can't get past him because he still blocks the doorway, but they can't hurt him either because he's withdrawn. He will heal while he blocks the way. Perfect! But watch out: the enemy will desperatley try to hit you backline with ranged attacks and spells if possible. Kana: fire from the back row at mages or priests (NOT paladins or whatever), sing "Come Sweet Winds" only. Its damage stacks. Summon Phantom asap! It's superstrong at those levels. Attack mages and priests with it. Repeat. If Edér and later pet fall, move in the gap and tank with weapon & shield. Loor & Pet: don't engange with the pet first. If there's room besides Edér in the doorway - or somebody slips through: engage. If not, then wait as backup should Edér fall. If the pet engages, fire at the same target with Loor. Else Loor shoots mages and priests like the rest. What class is Fara? Rogue? She has really bad endurance. You should keep her in the backrow and use her arbalest. If she's a rogue then her shots will do great damage when enemies are blinded from Chillfog. Concentrate your backline fire on one enemy until he's down. Then target the next. Your priority targets are mages and priests - mages first if you can reach them. Try to attack those who are blind or otherwise debuffed. Should go pretty smooth then.

Well Novice's and Transcendent Suffering have some really weird mechanics that let you deal very consistent damage no matter if doing a graze or a crit. And after several shouts of "WTF OBS?" I actually came to like that (mostly on other characters than a monk) although I think this was not entirely intended. But the lacking ACC for TR is really stupid. I like a monk with weapons because the on-crit effects translate to TR's AoE. And because of lashes. But it's nice that you get really powerful backup crushing weapons for free.

What ticks? As far as I know Silver Tide is an instant heal, not healing over time. No ticks involved.

Ancient Momory stopped after the first action that interrupted your chanting - like casting an invocation. It's supposed to be fixed in 3.04. So I guess that's what hrwd is taking about...?

Ok - now that's crappy. To be honest I never ever noticed. And I didn't read all those things from 1.x and so on because I startet to play PoE a bit later and really got into it with 2.x. And I now realize that I never played a monk with fists - besides the Witch Doctor with The Long Pain. But that's another story: I guess the Long Pain's ACC applies to TormR because those fists are summoned weapons and not basic fists pimped by Transcendent Suffering. Would be one more reason to use them instead of the normal fists (they also get +20 ACC).

Can it be that it also doesn't profit from from weapons' ACC enchentment (never tested that)? Because the cone's damage has nothing to do with the weapon at all. It has it's own crush base damage. If it is so I wouldn't consider it a bug. Torment's Reach is an ability and therefore should get +1 ACC per level like bash does. Maybe that's the case here? I guess Charge's crush damage has the same mechanics?

Playing the lance guy atm - I don't know, but in early levels Merciless Caze is really useless. Even in longer fights it may trigger once, I never saw it trigger twice - i mostly graze at the moment. But that's still a lot of damage with Concelhaut's Staff. Siphon is much cooler in my opinion. Might change with more levels though...

ok

But how to determine what is best without certain criteria - like how much time passed from start to end? Brynlod def. is the hardest encounter, but I don't know if it's a lot of fun to do only that. It's a really tedious fight. Maybe it would make a good final though. But I would start with something easier.

How come? At lvl 16 he should have more ACC bonus via Novice's Suffering than most weapons can get.

Always put out some figurines. With the barb I also survived some encounters with figurines although I was already dead. Just lure the enemies to a different location, if you think things go south summon a beetle or whatever. Even if you die and the summon disappers after it's duration wears off you will still get up after the bounty guys return to their places. But maybe I tested that with a party in the back and only send the chanter in to test this. Most of the time I test builds with some other guys at the edge of the encounter to prevent annoying encounter cancellations due to mind control.

@K Galen B: Good to know, thanks for the info. I used it a lot with a blaster build quit some time ago and I couldn't remember if a spell mastery would make sense or not. @prototype00: Merciless Gaze doesn't seem to make a lot of difference compared to other lvl-2-spells like Corrosive Siphon (which is really good: AoE dmg + healing). Combusting Wounds is also good with the Lance. But MG lasts for a long time which is also a good thing. In solo runs it will be better than with parties: the longer the encounter, the better the payoff of Merciless Gaze I guess. As I said I will test a bit more and then I'll see what feels is the best choice. Maybe it will be Merciless Gaze, who knows?

But we shouldn't make things too complicated. I think it's not possible to come up with a competition that will give you the best overall build. It will only give you the best build for this special competition - like you said: the best racing car for a special course. But that's ok for me. Developing a competition that takes "everything" into account will take forever and I also think it wouldn't be too complicaed to be much fun. We shoudl keep the rules simple and the work you have to put into the competition shouldn't bee too hard. If we want to copmare other aspects of builds (who are not good at this competition but we know they are good at something else) we can come up with another competition later, for example a supporter competition. We could define a given, generic character that needs to do an encounter and then you'll have to come up with competetive builds that support that character the best they can.

It's damage is not too good. But sure, with enough healing bonuses it can be good. And for HoF you can always switch to a second weapon set that's more optimized for it.

@Ben: it's a solo competition.

I also used the exact same barb for a solo run - at the same time Kaylon did. It was a funny coincidence. You have to know that it doesn't always work out like this. Often enough the barb gets disabled and dies. Of course nobody would post that on Youtube. Actually I solo'd Magran's Faithful with a chanter and Black Sanctuary: go in with Cape of the Cheat, withdraw and switch to one handed setup. Don'tknow if I can repeat it, but it felt OK. Less fuzz than with the barb + Frenzy + Dragon Leap + Combusting Wounds + HoF (trying to get them all) + Barbaric Blow + Vengeful Defeat. Of course the barb's HoF+ action is more impressive.

I would prefer no consumables. They lead to the same tactics with every class. Figurines would be OK I guess. Maybe we shouldn't pick the toughest bounty which only tanks or kiters can win but choose encounters that become a bit more difficult with each "round". Like three difficult but not too hefty bounties that you can do one after another (and three times each).

I only did bounty testing so far. Can't say how it fares throughout a whole playthrough - I will find out this evening I guess. But since it's a wizard it will be all good I guess. Spell Masteries: I will test different spells. But my first guess is 2-Corrosive Siphon, 3-Alacrity & 4-Pull of Eora. Lvl 1 i'm not sure. Either Wizard's Double, Eldritch Aim or Spirit Shield. For level 2 I will also test if using Infuse with Vital Essence prophylactically will reduce health loss a lot or not. Stats with higher values will be MIG, INT and PER. DEX, RES and CON will remain untouched I guess. When I choose to max MIG/INT/PER I might have to dump one stat, maybe RES. Then I will def. take Spirit Shield as mastery for lvl 1. Or I will put DEX, RES and CON at 08 or so. I'll see how things work out. Of course you can use Abydon's Hammer - especially the 1/encounter stun before going in and for some AoE spells in order to deal more damage. I think I will not have to rest because I don't have no use of Spirit Lance left, but mainly because my health is low or my uses for self buffs are all gone.

The Ogres outside the cave have enormous endurance, but low defenses. This may favour builds with lots of damage but low ACC. For example. Maybe it would be fair to define three different bounties. Upscaled Brynlod is too tedious in my opinion. It would take a lot of time to complete 10 runs against him and it favours high defense builds. The whole thing shouldn't be too much work though - nobody will do this if you need a whole day for completing it.

See? How do you want to compare the dps potential if not competing solo? With a party there are too many possibilites, synergies and so on to really compare dps without a ton of kerfuffle.

You know this is great fun for me, arguing about ths stuff. I had an idea... Watch here: PoE Class Build Arena

While discussing the power of certain builds I had an idea for a competition here in this subforum: We won't have PvP in PoE and therefore can't have duels. But maybe we can compete in a different way? Why don't we define certain rules for a class build competition and then keep track of people's results with a highscrore list that gets updated? If we make this a sticky post it could become not only a competition but also a good source of knowledge for class building. And it puts all those building we do to a fun purpose. I'd say every attempt should go into a seperate thread (like we do it with class builds). We could name them "[ARENA FIGHT] <name of the build> (class)" and the results can be put onto the list here (also like we do with the class builds in Andrea's sticky list - which is awesome by the way). So let's say we define the following rules (I'm totally open for different/more suggestions, just discuss): - do a specified encounter (maybe bounty?) 10 times in a row with the same lvl 16 solo char of your liking. This would be more easy to do than 10 different encounters (too much travelling). Or do 5 times this encounter and 5 times that so that the types of enemies are more diversed? - no consumables and resting bonuses - or doping allowed? - spell bindings, chances, holdings, defenses etc. are allowed, enchantments too. - obvious bugs or glitches (e.g. Confident Aim bug) don't count - count the seconds from the start of each encounter to the end and add them up over the 10 attempts. That will be your score. The less the better. Like with racing. - we could define some additional bonuses for retaining a lot of endurance/health or something like that. And if you ask me, we could also give some bonus points for stylish appearance (if it doesn't mean too much fuzz to vote). - we need a rule what happens if you get knocked out in an encounter (penalty seconds or sth. like that?) What do you think? This should be a lot of fun.

I'm not arguing The Dragon Thrashed vs a whole barb. I'm arguing chanter vs. barb. If you want to compare abilities only we could do Dragon vs. HoF. The Dragon Thrashed also does more damage with a crit (not *1.5 though) - so that's not an argument in favor of the barb. The thing is the huge radius. And dps is all the damage you do combined in a given time. If the encounter ends more quickly your dps was higher. Higher numbers that pop out of enemies' heads don't mean the overall DPS is higher. The ultimate test in game is to start encounter and count the seconds until the encounter ends. When fighting bounties solo with a single handed chanter with maxed out ACC and Aspirant's Mark (and focus on self healing rather than deflection) a lvl 16 chanter always finishes the encounter more quickly for me than a barb - because he covers ALL enemies. With 22 INT and 22 PER and 20 MIG (doesn't need to be 30 - I try to argue with numbers that you can have every encounter without too much fuzz) - an item with Overseeing and the Voice of the Mountaintop he will cover an enormous radius and will hit with over 120 ACC with his chant without ANY buff. Cast Aspirant's Mark at the start of the encounter from stealth and go in. You will have killed the whole group more quickly than any barb. Maybe in theory, on paper and when everything goes smooth the barb could end the encounter more quickly - but in reality I don't see that happen too often - you will get interrupted, maybe go prone and then tour DPS stops. And as I said: the chanter can do other stuff while chanting - like dropping 3 fireballs on enemies' heads or stuff. A barb can't do this without stopping his swings. As I said: during many tests I did not encounter a barb who could kill - let's say the Ogres in Elmshore - faster than said chanter. An I did solo runs until that point with both. You seldomly have the perfect encounter with a barb where you reach all enemies with HoF. Sometimes you have casters standing elsewhere and you have to pull (=loss of dps). Sometimes you get disabled. Maybe in theory, against training dolls, the damage output of a barb can be higher, but I doubt it's the case when you actually play the game.