Boeroer

You could add Zealous Focus and Inspiring Radiance for +10 coolness though.

Right - forgot that, sorry. Good point with the damage types. But there's just two foes in the game that are immune to pierce and shock st the same time - if I recall correctly.

Stormcaller is a hunting bow - you need WF Peasant for that. Stats are OK. You could dump con to 3 and put it into INT for higher stun/wounding/marked prey duration. Twinned Arrows, Stunning Shots and Driving Flight(!) are perfect for Stormcaller. That way the Returning Storm triggers superoften and you hit more foes with the -6 shock DR effect with a single shot. If you want even more DPS, don't waste talent points on smth. rel. weak like Apprentice's SA, pump your pet instead. A Wolf with Vicious, Resilient and Merciless Companion plus Predator's Sense is a DPS monster, especially if you use wounding and stunning shots. I also strongly recommend Stalker's link. There's a torc that adds +20% damage to that talent.

But that's always reserved for the barb.

I would be happy if the chances to trigger something would be higher or if they had some truely unique features like Stormcaller (-6DR) has. Something that only this weapon does and is not tied to x% on hit/crit. Something like interfering for example (-5 def. on hit), but more special. One could have a weak elemental carnage/blast effect - Greenstone Staff for example: 10% raw damage over time aoe or something like that.

That stuff gets triggered way to seldomly to be useful. Onlly exceptions are the barb and the ranger with their "one strike - multiple hits" abilities. Weapons that do stuff on crit are more reliable and trigger more often. So no - I don't disregard that - and I think it's not wack at all. Only exception: Stormcaller. It's -6 shock DR on hit is awesome. And with a ranger's multiple hits per it's Returning Storm is also very powerful. The rest of the soulbound weapons is just inferior to enchantet unique weapons. Especially in regard to durgan refinement.

Depends on the difficulty setting.

If I only had your problems...

You think? Sounds like a physics thing. And Unity has 3D physics build in. Should be doable? Would also be awesome if the chars would react to a Ball of Flame or Twin Stones with a physics effect (aka push). They already have some physics in the game: sometimes the models of enemies fly around in absurd poses when I pause, it looks like slow motion - their arms and legs swirling around like that of a ragdoll. When I unpause, that spook is gone - everybody else experienced this?

Not at the moment, no. I waited a long time for a RPG like PoE. A game that has a complex ruleset with many talents/abilities/items. A RPG that is not like many others nowadays which want to make everything supereasy for the casual gamer und simplifiy everything and making mistakes impossible. I'm looking at you, Diablo III, biggest disappointment ever! I played Torchlight II for some time and had some very nice Engineer builds, but I got bored quickly after two complete playthroughs. What also limits the choice of games is the fact that I use Linux and only buy games that I can install directly via steam (no Wine and other fiddling). And I have a job, two little kids (third incoming) and a really nice wife who want to spend some time with me from time to time. I only got permission for one game at a time.

I don't know. If stacking things is a problem, you should just make it so that certain effects are powerful enough in itself, but don't stack. For example: Why does Ancient Memory stack with itself? If the talent itself would do 2 per tick but didn't stack, it would be viable for a single chanter. If you'd have more than one chanter in the party you could just take that talent with one chanter and the others could skip that talent. Problem with stacking solved - still a viable talent. The other is: balancing these regeneration effects is really hard if you use flat numbers. You can make it so that it's ok at low levels - but then t will be meh in midgame and totally useless in endgame. If you balance it for midgame, it will be totally overpowered in the early game and so on. That's why we don't have flat +x dmg modifiers in PoE (some exceptions), but mostly +x%. Regeneration would work ok for the entire game if it wouldn't give you +x endurance per tick, but +x% of your max endurance per tick instead. So let's say +1% max endurance per tick. That would always mean that it takes 100 ticks (300 sec) to heal your complete endurance. Doesn't matter if you have 500 max endurance or just 100. That would be fair. Why should the complete regeneration of a high-con char take longer than that of a low con char? Would also be another motivation to invest in more con, which is still the least importat stat.

And take Armored Grace! It's awesome!

Ancient Memory (0. stacks, that's true. With 6 chanters and Veteran's Recovery (1.5) + Beloved Spirits (0.4) on each you will have a regeneration of 8.7 endurance every tick. Tick rate is once every 3 seconds. So you get 8.7 Endurance every 3 seconds. That's good at lower levels - but you had to use 6 chanters for that (which is quite extreme) and each one of them had to "waste" 3 talents (out of 7) for that. That's not worth it, seriously. 6 times "The Dragon slashed" on the other hand - now that's powerful. You'll do like 700+ damge per phrase while just standing around. Even fire immune enemies will get hurt because it's half fire/half slash. And that only costs you one ability. Why is one talent superweak and the other one so good? If recovery would scale with level, it would still not be overpowered, but just viable. And why these numbers? 0.8??? 0.4??? How about 1 and 0.5. I mean who decided that 0.8 is a good numer?

That's what I guessed. Thanks for clearing this up.

Weapon Focus Soldier is a very solid choice. Great Swords or Estocs - in the end it doesn't really matter. My advice for Great Swords + Fighter is Hours of St. Rumbalt: causing prone and doing extra dmg on crit is perfect for a high accuracy char.

I'm happy that your party composition works. You've put a lot of planning into it and it would have been a shame if you would have died early. The Lagufaeth and Banshees always were the most annoying enemies for me because of their paralyzing abilities. The bounties in WM are pretty tough, too. If you survived that I'm pretty confident that you can do the rest, too. Watch out for Crägholt - and I don't mean the Torn Bannermen outside. The hardest fights in the game (Alpine Dragon aside) I had against these stupid animated weapons inside Crägholt. I tend to use special synergies between my party members - if the enemy is immune to nearly all afflictions (like this hovering weapons) this tactic falls apart. So watch out! Always risky to go into areas that you are to weak for. Lvl 5 in Dyford Ruins is very ambitious for example, hehe. Ok, keep going - long life and prosper!

You can add that tiny animat - then you have 6 dwarves. If you want 7 dwarves your ranger can take the boar as animal companion. Isn't a dwarf technically, but looks linke one...

I was also disappointed when I saw that the first time. Makes this item nearly useless.

So they really nerfed this in a way that it's useless now. Too sad.

You can stack things like Thick Skinned, the talent from the Crucible Knights and Iron Wheel. And food of course.

I don't know. What has the timer of summons to do with saving? I don't know how Unity works "under the hood", I just toyed around with it a bit. But you can't save your game during combat (thant's when summons appear = instance created) and after combat they disappear (you can remove the instance). Then you save. What's the problem? Before the trap nerf the traps also disappeared after some time. They didn't stay forever. At the moment seals do stay forever, even if you leave the map and come back later they are still there. Doesn't seem to be a pproble, but I think that's not a very clever design. Nobody expects hos seals/traps to stay forever if you leave the map. I get it that if you just instanciate game objects and never remove Thema you will get problems with loading. You should remove thema - but in a smarter way, or not? You don't need to remove the old ones with new ones - you can just remove the old ones when you leave the map, rest, after some time and so on.

I am a software developer and this is also my guess. Seems you made an educated one. Thanks a bunch for testing Thick Skinned. In the meantime, I had to cut out skirts from a fashion catalogue and glue them onto some oddly drawn figures. I guess you had the more interesting - and more manly - job. :D

Testing builds is number one priority for me - after I did some playthroughs. That way I get to know the system, I discover what I like and what not and where's potential. I like to toy around with the ruleset and items to find interesting and fun to play builds. When I find something really nice, I will do a playthrough again. Maybe the playthroughs take more time than the builds though. I want to make sure that they not only work at lvl 14, but throughout the whole game. So it happens from time to time that I don't kill Thaos because I know before (after Crägholt for example) that a build or a party composition is working really well. So Thaos can wait forever. Most of the time (with a powerful party) the fight against Thaos is a child's birthday party anyway, so... All that testing is the only reason I'm still starting the game (like... every day). My poor kids...

I don't know if they nerfed it or if the AI responds better now to this tactic. When I used it some time ago, I did the bounty in Valewood only with this thing. I was too weak to do it any other way. I just put the +1 movement chant and the frost trap chant in my songbook, then I ran towards the xaurips/drakes and turned and ran away. My whole party was dropping so many traps that half of the pack was badly injured and hobbled (great for my ranged rogue) when I decided to turn around and face them. I also erased the gleaming society (and deciples of the true flame) with this (added other traps and seals). About your thoughts: 1.: If you're too fast, they will return, that's true. So if you have an insane movement speed you need to run back and forth or run in circles around them. Also works in Crägholt if you're too weak to face them directly. Yes, I just realised that new drop traps will replace the old ones - I think this was nerfed in one of the latest patches. The trick would now be to let the enemy step into the traps before new ones are dropped. This needs way more micro and reduces the usefulness of the phrase a lot. 2.: Never had such problems - but as I said: Some time passed since I used kiting tactics. 3.: Good to know, thanks. 4.: I now think they nerfed another viable (not OP) thing so much that it's really crappy now. Sad story p.s.: I just tested a chanter-barb-combo where the chanter would sing the minus-10-Concentration phrase and the frightening phrase and casts a "Terrify" after 4 phrases. The barb maxed PER, dual wields Godhanstunyr (0.75 sec interrupt, stunning) and Shatterstar (1.0 sec interrupt) and took Interrupting Blows and Threatening Presence. Works like a charm: interrupt-locking all mobs, regardless if I hit or crit. Damage is whimpy - but who cares if I just can hit forever without being hit. So you can still make good use of your chanter now... you know... Interrupts.

Which soulbound item is overpowered? They are all weaker than a fully enchanted (12/12), durgan refined weapon. Only exception is Stormcaller. AND you have to run around and unlock all the good (not overpowered) stuff. The rest of the soulbound items I never bothered to use.