Boeroer

You just have to max CON.

You can build a lot of things in this game, but you asked how pros do it. Our suggestion is just based on experience. He fits your requirements: he's melee, he does tons of DPS and on top he seldomly goes down or catches an affliction because his defenses are very high. What's not to love? He's basically like a tanky Paladin with Sacred Immolation - but can have his dps chant way eralier, has slightly less defenses - but his chant does not expire. In 3.0 it may be that he sings so fast that he can also do more invocations. With his MIG and INT they will be devastating - but he will cast slowly. That's no problem though because he just shrugs hits off. Autoattacks can add some damage, that's true, but it just pales in comparison to his main chant - so why bother? The good thing with this tank version is that you can dump DEX to three and it doesn't influence your DPS at all. You can pump MIG and INT and PER and focus on your chant for DPS. Scion of Flame is great for that for example. The DR debuff also works for his Dragon Slashed chant by the way. I think that even his burning lash chant gets applied to the slashing part. Not sure though since I liked to use Frighten + Dragon Slashed to debuff ACC of foes in order to be even more tanky. I once did a build with Sanguine Plate, Blade of the Endless Paths, Shod-in-Faith and all the talents that boost melee damage (Vuln. Attack, Appr. Sneak, Savage Attack, Two Handed Style and so on). He did good single target damage with the sword, that's true - but he also went down more often and got stunned, prone or paralyzed - then he and his sword and chants did nothing and that's a shame. I found this tanky variant to work better. It also needs nearly no micro.

Same here.

Yeah - now I had some encounters where my barb just ran away from the fight and stood there - 15 meters away - doing nothing - then coming back. And he's not supposed to see ghosts or stuff since he isn't the Watcher in the family.

The bonuses you get from Survival are really strong. Maybe too strong. I just loaded an old savegame in which a barb had 11 Survival. +4 DR for example is quite a lot. I suppose these stack with resting bonuses from taverns/inns? Good decision to integrate the consumables' duration buff into this system I think. The change of the skills is nothing I will rant about. I like it. But I didn't have the time to test out Second Wind yet. Is it getting any better if you pump Athletics? At lower levels the healing is quite whimpy.

That's exactly my experience with ranged ciphers. In fights against dragons they can be especially useless - now even more because Tactical Meld is total crap now. That was also one reason why blunderbuss ciphers were still viable: you would focus your fire on low DR foes anyway. If there was a weapon with raw damage it would be cipher's no. 1 (or two). Edit: i turned crippling off. To annoying if you don't want to play with a party of 6 turtles. My experimental Vengeful-Defeat-Barb just had a nervous breakdown because of them.

Huh? Why can't you beta test, why? I'm also not a backer of the PoE game. But now look at my installation: it says 3.0. Just go to you steam library, right klick on PoE select properties, selet beta tab, choose beta branch in the dropdown field and enter "BETAPASSWORD" into the text field. What you said is true - but how can they know it's too much if you don't comlain? A LOT? Not that I'm against nerfing certain spells like Amplified Wave. It's AoE was way too big and the damage part was too high. But they did this ONT TOP of this focus inflation. Would be ok if they buffed some higher level powers that nobody uses anyway because they are bad compared to others. Or invent some more useful. This statis shell is so useless... They also nerfed Tactical Meld so that it's complety unattractive now. You pay 50 focus so that you can hit foes better that... whait, which foes? They are all dead because the wizard, druid and priest started with their spell mastery CC and then turned then into pulp while the monk was spamming Torment's Reach and Forge of Anguish like crazy because he run around to catch some flimsy disengagement attacks. What will happen: every cipher will now spam low-level powers because nobody has the time to wait for 60 or 70 focus to build up. CC is great when you can apply it at the beginning of a fight and not when 50% of the enemies are dead anyway. If they are afraid that a cipher ruins every encounter because he can start with a high level CC then they should think about nerfing the initial focus a cipher starts with at the beginning of every encounter. They did that once and is was painful, but just. But with this cost increase they turn the cipher into the old chanter while buffing the chanter so that he can do things quicker. I beg that they will withdraw this focus nerf. It's totally ok if they balance the spells though.

Oh, Schemer's Needler time!

Did you guys know that you can pile up 13 Fireballs per rest as a wizard (without scrolls and Necklace of Fireballs)? 4(normal spell count)+1(Ring of Wizardry for lvl 1&3)+3(Flames of Rhi-Whatnot sabre)+3(Tiddletwat's Staff)+1(Curoc's Brand)+1(bonus spell talent). Plus another per encounter use if you choose Spell Mastery for Fireball. So you could cast 14 fireballs in one encounter if things really get messy. Sure they'll nerf this so that it will cost 10000 focus per use or something like that... Any other class could still have 7 uses per rest. Have to look for a substitute for cipher powers since my ciphers can't use their powers above lvl 4 any more. Because... you know... they cost 30000 focus now. Are there more items that give you fireballs/rest?

Ahhh - there you are! :D

Welcome to "Normal" difficulty.

They just destroyed the cipher. Seals don't get a bonus from mechanics. At least not in 2.03.

If you reach Hearthsong you can buy the quarterstaff that has 3 Fireballs per rest. Nice addon! Totally forgot about that. Somebody reminded me today - also forgot who that was. Who was it? Guys? It was a thread about barbs or not? Wha'ever - thanks for reminding me.

For me, the best melee dps chanter build was that of a full tank with dumped DEX, high MIG, PER, INT and normal RES. Take all talents that raise defenses and Weapon & Shield. Use a Ring of Overseeing and the Voice of the Mountaintop for a very huge AoE. In the beginning use all the cone-shaped damage invocations for damage, the endurance draining and another lvl 1 chant. Later switch to The Dragon Slashed and take Scion of Flame. Your dps will be great then - as your tankyness. Six of those are really devastating. I posted a build the other day: The Drake's Ambassador I can't say if this is still viable in 3.0 - but I think so.

But I will. Your DPS will rise if you are able to hit 6 foes instead of three. More than hitting 15% faster. I just did a little test with a spear wielding barb and did the Nalrend bounty in Elmshore with 20 INT - and then with 10. Most of the time I will hit three or four more ogres with higher INT. Your AoE only needs to scratch them. There is a break-even-point around 20 INT that lets you reach way more foes. A reach weapon makes this even better.

I never played a fighter before this one - so I didn't feel anything they did to them. I still don't understand it. There was no need and there is no need for a fighter nerf. They nerf classes that are not overpowered at all. They buffed some classes that needed it (paladin, ranger) some while ago, which was good - but now these are way more powerful than the classes they recently nerfed. And they buffed paladin and ranger again! I mean stunning shots for melee rangers - wow. Not that I complain about that - I just don't know if they have a stoned turtle sitting at the balance-desk or what?

Seriously - that's way too much. Nobody complained that ciphers are too strong or something like that. I mean nobody whom we should take serious. brindle88 with his "Amplified Wave is god mode lol" is gone - so we can all agree that this WAS a balanced class. If you listen to brindle88 you also have to nerf rogues. Lets nerf Sneak Attack so that is does -50% damage instead of +50% and you have to cause an affliction in order to avoid that... Sounds stupid? Well so does 10 focus * cipher power level... And I'm not even a big cipher fan and normally don't rant - but this time I could make an exception. Really I just can't stop... 70 focus? I think I'll get a stroke. No wait - that will cost me too much focus...

Why do they always have to make one class the worst with overambitioned nerfs? Small steps would be better than this two big steps forward and one back. "Let's nerf Constant Recovery and Ancient Memory so that is has a limited duration (nobody called for this, but still... I'm bored) - ok now it's total crap - let's buff it again and double the endurance gain. But to make it really awkward, lets nerf the duration again - yikes! we totally messed this up! High five! Wait! Let's also nerf that to high four!"

Didn't we also have this stupid Defender nerf that nobody called for?

As always... I mean - it already got nerfed from infinite to 90 secs before.

I did some tests now and it seems that Constant Recovery does not scale with level. It's 6 points per tick now instead of 3 and only lasts 45 secs. Rapid Recovery however does scale with level. At lvl 14 my Engineer with 17 MIG gets 5.3 endurance per tick. So at lvl 14 the effect is doubled (used to be 1/tick, now 2/tick at lvl 1). The cloak is not affected. It's still +2 per tick (but with halfed duration). It all still stacks. Now the Engineer regains 15 endurance per tick instead of 9 or 10. This is not bad - but in absolute numbers it's worse than before: Old version: 9 end per tick for 90 sec means 270 end New Version: 15 end per tick for 45 sec means 225 end I still think it's better because as a tank you most deperately need healing when there are lots of enemies poking at you - not so much at the end of a fight. And sometimes 9 per tick is not enough.

With the Beldam it might be not too bad because at some point the focus generation was so fast that I couldn't cast fast enough to get rid of it. But all the poor bow using ciphers out there. By the way: another hidden cipher nerf is the fact that Carow Golan now does +20% focus instead of +4. Bye bye Blunderbuss. Backlash Beldam works without it if you compensate with potion of flame shield.

But you have Constant Recovery from the start. Or were you just talking about Rapid Recovery? Whatever - it's a nice thing that it all stacks. Also with chanter's Ancient Memory & Beloved Spirits. That also got a buff by the way. Got doubled and also scales now. Duration halfed.

I also lost an arquebus again some days ago from my 2. weapon slot.

Well, everybody has a tough time against these Ogres.