Boeroer

That is unfortunate since the Blade of the Endless Paths -in the right hands - is one of the best two handed weapons in PoE. As all weapons it's not overpowered - but it's pretty great because it has speed. Due to the multiplicative speed stacking in PoE, the speed enchantment is the best DPS enchantment (besides wounding). Tidefall is good as well, but it's not "much better" than the Blade otEP. For particular classes/builds the Blade is actually better (melee Cipher, marking Paladin for example). But yes: Tidefall comes earlier (with the right metaknowledge that you'll need 10 mechanics and the scouting mode to even find it) which might lead to the assumption that it should be worse. But that would not follow the basic item design principle I mentioned earlier so... 🤷‍♂️ It is a weapon that has exceptional qualities for certain builds - but is not especially good for others. Combos like cone AoE + afflictions and other special attacks like Soul Annihilation and cone AoE + AoE abilities (for example Clear Out) on one hand and Offensive Parry (retaliation) on the other hand make it a very good pick for certain effective (rather diverse) builds. Thus it doesn't "suck" per se but can be a cornerstone of a fun and successful playthrough. It depends on how you play Xoti. You don't need to use something else if you don't want to. Both weapons are tailored to her and her class combos. For me it's a good thing that you don't necessarily have to switch out those (style- and lore-wise) fitting weapons. But you can for example focus on kill-stealing/interrupting with her (and get 3 wounds everytime you do that because of her monk subclass which in turn is great with Rooting Pain) - then you would rather want to use something like Twin Eels for example. Or you focus on her Blessed Harvest spell and give her a Morning Star + modal instead of sickle + lantern so she doesn't miss the spell. Also works well. I once gave the Sickle away to the party Rogue/Barb (skilled him for max Religion) and paired all the speed buffs, Sneak Attack and Deathblow stuff with the up-to 60% dmg bonus and the speed bonus of the sickle. Made Xoti an SC Monk and used the Lantern to gain +4 wounds and +1 Mortification when killing squishies with Inner Death. I like that you can play around with weapons so much. This wouldn't be possible if weapons would be desiged more like in the BG series or so where they just become more powerful the further you go. Granted - this is more attractive to players who play multiple times/try out multiple chars and less for one-time players who couldn't care less I guess.

Lord Darryn's Voulge, Lance of the Midwood Stag, Engoliero do Espirs, Chromoprismatic Staff, Watershaper's Focus, Griffin's Blade, Blightheart, Twin Eels, Slayer's Claw, Sun and Moon, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, Xoti's Sickle, Xoti's Lantern, Frostfall, Ngati's Tusk, Weyc's Wand, A Whale of a Wand, Resounding Call... and I'm sure I missed some. Most of those are quite abscure in their quality to support casting though so I agree that there could have been more obvious "caster stat sticks" where even new players would go like "whoa this is nice for casting ma spells". Willbreaker, rods, Whispers of the Endless Paths, Eccea's Arcane Blaster, Scordeo's Trophy, Animancer's Blade, Essence Interrupter, Lover's Embrace, Pukestabber, Squid's Grasp, Baradatto's Luxury, Magistrate's Cudgel, Rännig's Wrath, Kapana Taga, Spearcaster, Cadhu Scalth, Dire Talon and many more don't fall into those categories and yet don't suck at all. Bad example imo because all three unique war hammers are nice and war hammers in general are a good pick for a Devoted. Also Voidwheel comes quite late. ot that much to have when the weapon you are supposed to have fun with comes to you when the game is in its last stage (sort of, at least without DLCs). Luckily there are other unique great swords before that. Maybe Great Swords vs. Crossbows would have been more revealing. Crossbow is a bad pick for a Devoted. You mean stuff like Essence Interrupter, Whispers of the Endless Paths, Grave Calling, Amra, Sun & Moon, Watershaper's Focus, Spearcaster, Hand Mortar, Gladiator Sword and more don't count? If the weapon/armor enchantments and the upgrading system do something then it's making sure early weapons do keep up. If anything then it's unusual that you can collect weapons that are top tier in terms of their special properties are so potent you will keep usig them from beginning to the end. In fact that is on point of criticism of many players: that you can keep using the early weapons without the need to change to better ones - so basically the criticism is that a lot of early uniques are NOT stepping stones. It's like the two most criticized aspects of the difficulty setting I suppose: "it's too easy" and "it's too hard"... "items can get upgraded and enchanted so you don't have to change them because they stay viable - i hate it" vs. "items can get upgraded and enchanted but you have to change them because they still won't stay viable - i hate it"... 😕 I think the basic idea of weapon modals is great. I personally don't need even more per-encounter stuff to micromanage. Party size got reduced from 6 to 5 just because having more active abilities (also with martial classes/builds) means a lot more micromanagement. Adding per-encounter-management to resource-pool-management adds more... well... management. Even with 5 party members I already find myself using "select all, attack" in numerous fights because - while it's less effective - it's just faster. I only wish the modals were a) treated as passives so that modals wouldn't stop to be useful once you swin in active buffs and b) wouldn't show signs of "we couldn't come up with any more interesting stuff so we gave +PEN and +recovery time to a bunch of them". But modals like Body Blows, Overbearing Shot etc. are awesome imo and do exactly what they are supposed to: you activate them in certain situations and then they will give you a real advantage - and you deactivate them when they won't have an impact. That's way better than some 1/encounter ability imo. --- Where I agree is that some weapons that have a special niche should have been more impactful. "Wood Bane" from Vion-Ceth for example used to do +60% (or even +100%? 🤔) of bonus dmg against enemies with plant effects on them - so it was a great weapon once you had druids and rangers in the party. And since it's only additve dmg it wasn't OP with that bigger bonus either, just a really good pick and a nice synergy. I don't know why it got tuned down so much while you can have a lot of other weapons that have significantly more impact on nearly all encounters. 🤷‍♂️ Especially because you still needed to apply a spell/ability to the enemy which also is costing you. Other weapons that are supposed to be good against other types of enemies (beasts, vessels etc.) should have effects that are really impactful against those types on enemies and not just a lame dmg bonus or a bit more ACC (looking at stuff like Amaliorra etc.). At the same time you get an arquebus that does double barrel dmg to begin with and then also is THE bane of low level vessels if enchanted accordingly. I mean I get the From Dusk 'till Dawn reference but I would have preferred to see those effects on two different weapons, but whatever...

Okay, I can relate.

While I agree that the difficulty curve lurches around a bit I do def. not agree that a) the loot is indifferent and b) that you don't "suffer one bit" for not using consumables. a) The unique and soulbound items are balanced fairly well but several of them are different enough in form and function that they are worth building whole character concepts around them. If one can do that (and be happy with the result) they can hardly be indifferent. This is not the case for every unique item in the game of course, but for enough of them to call your claim exaggerated. Just because some unique items don't outshine the others in sheer power doesn't mean the loot is all indifferent. The balancing of the loot is not even boring per se - I'd say having a few superpowerful items that would kind of force you to use them or else you'd feel you're gimping yourself - that is boring. To prevent such things was/is one design goal of Josh Sawyer - which I am grateful for. Deadfire greatly improved the enchantment system of PoE. That made sure that no weapon became useless if you liked it for whatever reasons (cool imo) - or if you skilled for great swords and then found the sabre of awesomeness - which would both lead to frustration, especially with players who only play through such games once. So - nice decision imo - but the similar enchantment options made upgrading a bit bland. With Deadfire you get unique enchantment options for all unique weapons/armors which was a lot more work/more expensive but also is a lot more interesting. Because of that I can't see how the loot is indifferent... except when it comes to "power level". As I said that is a design goal which you might or might not agree with. b) It strongly depends on the player's skill level, the game mode, party composition, the meta knowledge and the difficulty settings (incl. god challenges and solo/expert/trial of iron etc.) whether you will miss consumbles or not. I almost never use consumables (because I want to avoid the added item management) except basic food when camping and I'm doing fine - but if I would use them they would make the game a lot easier for me. I think it's great that you aren't forced to use consumables to play the game successfully because you can tune the challange in so many ways to make it work. I would have preferred if consumables would have been implemented in a more inventive/unconventional way (especially scrolls!) - but I think not being forced to use them is a good thing. --- Tl;dr: besides the difficulty curve I think the other two things you mentioned are deliberate design decisions which worked out well - at least for me.

I do not agree because often there's less sturdy enemies in an encounter* and the 20% added duration in combination with other duration buffs (Lingering Echoes, INT, lowered RES, enfeebled) and Power Level scaling can be useful if you only use weapons as stat sticks anyway. Imo it's def. more useful than something like Griffin's Blade for a Cipher for example. Also in combination with the Helm (which is very good for affliction-slinging chars) it just feels right. )* which is also the reason why Blood Thirst can be better than one would anticipate at first glance. By the way: It also works with killing your own summons.

Iirc no megaboss is immue to DEX afflictions - so I guess that's why Grave Calling/Grave Bound is working for all of them (although it's pretty hard to crit a megaboss reliably and their very high RES cuts the already short duration quite a bit). Frostfall only procs very rarely (10% of crits). The duration is longer but imo the freezing effect is not really useful against the big ones.

Not always. Passive effects stack with everything and effects that originate from items usually also stack with everything. Only active abilites normally get supressed by the highest effect. But even there you can find some active buffs and debuffs you can stack as well because they address slightly different stats/group of stats. Example: you can stack deflection-only buffs like Mirrored Image or Arcane Veil with +x-to-all-defense buffs like Vigorous Defense, Borrowed Instincts or Llengrath's Safeguard (up to +70 deflection). You can stack Miasma of Dull-Mindedness with Bewildering Blows and Ben Fidel's Neck (-75 Will) etc.

It does not. You can test this with a Berserker/Druid who casts Form of the Delemgan on enemies. The spell grants immunity to DEX afflictions which removes Grave Bound (the freeze effect of Grave Calling). I just tried Frostfall's Encroaching Frost and it behaves the same. You could also spawn some dex immuny enemies but I couldn't recall any from the top of my head. 🥴

I seldomly use them because reflection only works with targeted "real" spells. You can never know if he enemies use an AoE or a targeted spell - so it may be that you cast Arcane Reflection for nothing. I'm not willing to do that too often unless it's clear that I will get attacked with targeted spells (like that superannoying Form of the Helpless Beast and such).

Afaik you can only paralyze foes who are resistant to dex afflictions, but not the ones who are immune. Freezing effects are of the same tier as petrify effects (dex affliction tier 4) - so they get downgraded to the paralyzed affliction once they hit a resistant target. A target that is immune to dex afflictions should be immune to freezing, too - unless Frostfall got its freezing implemented differently than Grave Calling for example.

classic Dad Guards

Trustworthy godess or not - the book of Woedica was added very late in the patching cycle after a lot of players voiced confusion about the motivation of the gods and the history and lore of the engwithans. The book was added to add a bit more exposition/explanation and make things clearer to players. I wouldn't make much sense to then add something that misleads players even further. Also Woedica is not known for trickery or skullduggery but for law, justice and oaths- so why shouldn't one trust that she says what she really thinks/recalls about the whole shebang? She might be an extemely autocratic and even cruel deity but she's especially not know for lying. In D&D she would be a lawful evil goddess.

Death Guards don't need Berath's doing nor blessing to come into existence: In the case of Yseyr he had the determination to serve Berath and retrieve the estoc/kill Lucia Rivan even after he was killed. Lucia Rivan was a Darcozzi - an order which normally isn't known for following Berath (their favored/disfavored dispositions don't really allign) - but she was zealous enough to rise as Death Guard after she was slayn by Yseyr. I don't recalls what she was so zealous about but iirc she was charged with protecting the blade. So when Yseyr wanted to collect that blade for Berath and Lucia wanted to guard it two very strong wills collided, leading to the creation of two Death Guards. Why she laves you alone after sensing Berath's chime? Maybe fear - a priest of Berath is her archenemy and Berath herself wishes her gone? Yseyr/Berath want the blade because it devours souls (or essence) - and that doesn't seem to sit right with Berath. It somwehat imitates what the gods do (feeding on souls to sustain their existence). Maybe it could even be used to gather godlike powers over time - if you'd only slew enough enemies or unlock its greater powers otherwise. Yseyr mentiones that the blade is too powerful to be used by kith/mortals. There isn't necessarily a good/bad side here. It's just two sides wanting something really bad.

Community Patch does this.

Wow @thelee, that's news to me. 👍

It helps to have some experience with programming. But basically it's just an "if this than that" machine. The best way imo is to alter an existing, premade script that will run once you turn AI on.

You need Berserker's Confusion in order to kill your own skeletons with your "Her Revenge" cone though. That will trigger Blood Thirst - as well as giving you a phrase per skeleton kill which in turn lets you repeat the invocation again right away. Without Berserker Confusion it takes a lot longer - at least against tougher enemies who don't drop dead from one use of Her Revenge. It also lets you gain phrases against single tough enemies very quickly.

Yes, that's cool. I also like to use Scordeo's Trophy's "speed everything up" enchantment on a Wizard with Wall of Draining. With the modal and Alacrity you can collect a lot of stacks quickly - and all stacks will last for most of the encounter.

Three Bells Through (and other similar "narrow line AoE" weapons like that one bow - that looks a bit like a harp which I forgot the name of - that fires a straight line on crit or x% hit or something) have a weird implementation. They don't carry weapon effects properly and don't work correctly with Driving Flights and Twinned Shot. And that one bow is extremely funny with Tinned Shot because if the "line" proc happens the two arrows that would normally fly in an arc to the target just go off to both sides in a straight line (hitting nothing).

About the paralyze: I suspect you ran into Lagufaeth or Xaurips. In case of Lagufaeth: Some of them have poisoned blowdarts which paralyze even on a graze and they have high accuracy and attack speed. You can counter that by using the small shield Aila Braccia (it turns all ranged grazes into misses and reflects the shot - so the Lagufaeth who only graze will paralyze themselves instead of you). Or you use buffs for both deflection (avoid getting grazed by the shot) and fortitude (avoid to get grazed by the paralyzing poison). This is less reliable though. The easiest way is to become immune with the help of a Priest's prayer spell. I guess a immunity or resistance vs. poison might also work (Paladin, mountain dwarf). As I said you might encounter similar problems with Xaurips - melee Xaurip Skirmishers to be precise (spear attack that paralyzes on graze iirc) and also Andragans (petrifying gaze). The Andragans are especially bad because their petrifying gaze lasts for a long time and their ACC is very high. Those are considered the most annoying types of enemies because they are hard to deal with if you don't know what's going on. So I feel your frustration.

I understand the problem but unfortunately I don't know the answer. Since Obsidian didn't develop the console versions they won't have any direct influence on the console versions and can't just add anything at this point. The PC version of the game is rather old so this forum isn't monitored nor very busy anymore. I fear you might not get a satisfying answer here. Paradox did the console port of PoE 1 and Versus Evil did the port of PoE 2 after Obsidian finished and finally patched the PC versions. Both companies might have their own forums for their console versions where one might find more info about this problem.

I can totally see ancient Wild Orlans hunting down other kiths for meat though. Thinking about certain pygmy tribes and so on...

It seems this whole "checkers vs. chess and TB has more depth and also soldiers train with TB instead of RTwP" bit was just there to emphasize how strategically/tactically or even mentally gifted OP is - compared to those moronic RTwP players who just drool on their pause keys to introduce some depths to their dull combat experience. 😏 Unfortunately hefty minmaxing was involved to achieve this kind of mastermind. Getting "self perceived intellect" up to 20 required lowering "social competence" to -5.

Wards - like other summons and Walls - are separate entities and unfortunately don't profit from your energized inspiration. But of course once enemies get crit by a Fear Ward you don't need to interrupt them anymore anyway. So yes, Furyshaper is a great pick imo, especially in combo with Helm of the White Void and Ben Fidel's Neck (the helm won't help the Ward, but it makes it so easy to hit with Ben Fidel which lowers Will by 10 bc. of frightened and then another 10 because of the upgrade which stacks). The Fear Ward has rather bad ACC. If it doesn't crit it can't terrify enemies with solid RES long enough - so all will debuffs do help a lot. An energized Berzerker/Skald with Many Lives + Blightheart and Blood Thirst - spamming Her Revenge - will interrupt most enemies in range all the time due to muktihit attack + no recovery and only 0.5 sec casting time PLUS chant and stagger procs. But he will do not much else than casting Her Revenge (can get quite boring - but also easy to script). Also it's worth debating whether the interrupts have any impact or not because enemies will die from Her Revenge so quickly...

Afaik all direct damage spell-like and attack-like effects that get applied by weapons/are enchantments of weapons scale with the weapon quality. For example Chilling Grave (Grave Calling), Extinction Event (Sungrazer), Thunderous Report (Kitchen Stove), Run-Through (WotEP) etcpp. and especially all those 1/rest stuff enchantments that are on several weapons but nobody notices because they are "only per rest". But since they scale with weapon quality they can become really impactful.