brindle88

Rangers so gloriously suck for the following reasons: - ANY Character can use the EXCAT same ranged weapon that a ranger can use at the same attack speed (slightly faster for ranger if they picked a certain talent) - Rangers tend to sit on the outskirts of battle and generally avoid getting hit. Spellcasters fit into this category also. - So after taking the above into consideration you have a choice = have a ranger with a ranged weapon or have a spellcaster with a ranged weapon. Its a no brainer, if you picked ranger you will have slightly better accuracy and there are 2-3 talents (MAX) to choose from at level up that are even worth picking, and you don't get 2 of them until nearly the end of the game. If you pick a Cipher/ Wizard/ Druid/ Preist (especially a preist with the arquebus +10 accuracy) you will be able to use your ranged weapon with slightly less effectiveness as the ranger but you will also be able to rain down hell on your enemies with fire, lighting ect and you will be able to stun, heal, charm paralyze .......................................... Rangers suffer from the same debilitating illness as barbarians and chanters........NO USEFULL ABILITIES TO CHOOSE FROM AT LEVEL UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Story themes may have epicness (but it is about same level epicness that BG1 has, ) and you may also claim that enemies like dragons should be more epic, but mechanically and design wise PoE's campaign is low to mid level (and that is what Obsidian aimed for with the game) When you kill Sky Dragon you get ability to make one or two superb weapons (as you get two sky dragon eyes or at least you should get two), in other words you can make one or two near epic level weapons. Where we come to Obsidian's design decision to make enchanting as very important part of itemization, which cases that when you look items that you find you should not look what level they are (normal, fine, exceptional, and in some degree superb), but what other enchantments they have. Like for example Godansthunyr (War hammer that you find from the Sky Dragon) has Stunning enchantment which can be quite powerful in hands of rightly build character. It is not nearly best weapon that you can find, but also Sky Dragon is only level 10 monster and far from most challenging encounters (meaning that it isn't really epic level encounter). I would say that in my opinion some of the PoE's enemies are such that they should be more epic than they are, because I am not sure what enemies Obsidian could bring in to actual Epic adventure, when for example their dragons are established to be something that high mid level parties can kill. But maybe they follow route that D&D has took where most of the dragons are designed to be mid to high level monsters and only couple that are actually meant to for epic level adventures without DM tweaking them. Ok. Why don't we all talk about abilities then. I feel the same way about abilities. Obsidian have balanced/ needed most of the to the point of nearly complete uselessness. The rogue has some good talents, the paladin has some good talents but is incapable of doing damage, the fighter has maybe 2-3 good useful talents, and barbarians/ chanters/ rangers are absolute oxygen wasters...pointless stupid redundant classes that are no good at anything and the spell casters eg wizards/ priests/ Druids/ ciphers have oook spells. But let's be honest here each of the spell caster probably have about 6-7 spells that you would use on a constant basis, with the rest of them hardly ever getting used. And anyone that thinks a ranger is any good is an absolute[LY LOVELY PERSON!!!] , they royaly suck and I mean really really really suck even after patch 2.00. Rangers need to be completely over hauled. Chanters and barbarians are not far off.

Look at what you get for killing the sky dragon. A warhammer that adds +1 might and it "may" stun on a crit. this warhammer is POE's answer to Baldurs gate hammer of thunder bolts. Have you even played Baldurs gate?? The Hammer of thunder bolts make the pillars weapon look like a can opener. So this is my reward for knocking off one off if the most powerful bosses in the game............................MEH Oh and I forgot to mention just to get to the sky dragon I had to hack my way through hordes of bad guys and I was fortunate enough to be able to pick up there useless armour so I could sell it so that I would have money to buy magic items that I don't need because they are to underpowered and will not make hardly any difference to my players. This scenario is replicated time after time after time in this game. Look at the endless paths, if you clear up to level 12 you get 2 yes that right 2 usefull magic items, that sabre on level 5 and that green set of armour!!!!!!!!

EXACTLY my point. Enchanting items should be removed. It takes the fun out of finding "rare" and " unique " items. Think about it, would you rather go around collecting herbs and eyeballs or would you rather have that feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment by finding an awesome item after completing a quest. Enchanting takes the fun out off the reward process and the enchantments mainly just add more more damage per second. We need more UNIQUE and VARIED and EXCITING magic items in this game. It would add a wow factor and make the game so much more enjoyable.

No joke there would be less then 10 magic items (probably more like 6-7) in PoE that are even worth going out of your way for. The vast majority of the items have bizarre/ pointless underpowered powers like: + 2 atheletics, + 1 engaged, + 1 resolve or a weapon " may" stun if your lucky on a critical hit for 3 seconds .

I am going to have to go with no on this one. For OP I will be a nice guy though and throw something out there. Obsidian has in the past publicly stated how they like to do balancing. Basically they like to overtune things so they are intentionally too strong, then bring them down from there. Why? Because they find for them it just works better this way and leads to a more consistent result. This is why you don't see abilities getting buffed too often because everything started a little stronger than they originally intended to begin with. Also just from my personal experience in "**** loads of games and mmo's tm all rights reserved" buffing is a helluva lot harder to do right than nerfing, and this is why most people do it that way. You think obsidian like to overtune things and bring them down from there? That's is complete nonsense, I cannot imagine why they would have such an idea. To suggest a studio would release a game like this as " overturned " on purpose and the "fix it" is complete nonsense. The point of my post was to address the issues I stated in the OP, eg worthless magic items, a lot of severely under powered talents sections upon level up, very weak player classes has severely impacted the fun and wow factor of this game.

Yeah sorry mate but my thread got hijacked, and the mods didn't erase all the pointless posts so I cleaned it up myself.

I think the obsidian team are damaging the potential of this game by balancing it so much. Instead of nerfing the crap out of classes I think they should make the encounters more difficult by buffing the monsters/ bad guys ect. When players have lots of exiting abilities and powers to choose from to beat the bad guys it makes the game sooooooo much more fun. For some bizarre reason obsidian are nerfing these powers or are simply creating talents to choose from that are to insignificant or balanced to be of any real use. Solution to this is like I said buff the bad guys and give the players the exiting powers! 95% of the magic items you get in this game are useless redundant cantrip poppers. Magic items in games like this are supposed to be a prize for hard worked adventuring, there is no feeling of reward or gain in pillars from obtaining magic items at the end of quests. When I came across magic item merchants in the game I simply scrolled right through there inventories and hardly ever purchased anything because the items would hardly make any difference to my players. Bring on the bg2 artefacts like the vorpal sword or carsomyr so we can get that feeling of fufillment. I feel like a lost man with a pointless existence running around the pillars world collecting garbage. The soulbound weapons are actually weaker then the high dps wepons that you can enchant.... I mean seriously wtf?..........stop balancing stuff so much please!

I think the obsidian team are damaging the potential of this game by balancing it so much. Instead of nerfing the crap out of classes I think they should make the encounters more difficult by buffing the monsters/ bad guys ect. When players have lots of exiting abilities and powers to choose from to beat the bad guys it makes the game sooooooo much more fun. For some bizarre reason obsidian are nerfing these powers or are simply creating talents to choose from that are to insignificant or balanced to be of any real use. Solution to this is like I said buff the bad guys and give the players the exiting powers! 95% of the magic items you get in this game are useless redundant cantrip poppers. Magic items in games like this are supposed to be a prize for hard worked adventuring, there is no feeling of reward or gain in pillars from obtaining magic items at the end of quests. When I came across magic item merchants in the game I simply scrolled right through there inventories and hardly ever purchased anything because the items would hardly make any difference to my players. Bring on the bg2 artefacts like the vorpal sword or carsomyr so we can get that feeling of fufillment. I feel like a lost man with a pointless existence running around the pillars world collecting garbage. The soulbound weapons are actually weaker then the high dps wepons that you can enchant.... I mean seriously wtf?..........stop balancing stuff so much please!

Concentrate your rogue on activating sneak attacks, death blows and critical hits and increasing your damage with crits by using the right weapons and quest bonus's eg merciless hand. This build is FAR AND AWAY the most powerful build in this game. My rogue absolutely wrecks everything on POTD. This is the only over powered build that is left after all the patch nerfs. If they nerf this I will be pissed off; I love my rogue

OP Dude you nailed it on the head. Barbarians suck at dishing out damage compared to rogues and fighters. There abilities gained upon level up give you the combat effectiveness of......well of not much. Barbarians suffer from the same disease that rangers suffer; severely useless and under powered talent/ abilities selection. Just look at the rogues talents selection tree and compare it to the barbies. I have no idea what barbarians are good at. You will notice a lot of people coming to there defence just ignore them all classes have there lovers and there haters, the love and the hate needs to be based of facts though and the facts are that rogues and fighters are vastly superior. The only reason you would roll a barbarian is if you watched Conan recently and you want to relive the whole " barbarian" experience.

And to all you blind sighted ranger lovers out there who will undoubtably throw there 2 cents in with regards to my above comment about rangers; i shall explain to you why rangers so gloriously suck, even after all there enhancements; 1. Any class can use a ranged weapon 2. Classes that use ranged weapons tend to sit on the outskirts of battle and generally avoid melee combat 3.wizards, priests, Druids, ciphers fit into this above category of sitting on the outskirts of battle 4. Now you have a choice; you can give you ranger a ranged weapon or you can give a spell caster a ranged weapon. If you picked a ranger you still will fire the same weapon that the spell caster can fire at the same speed (slightly better with a ranger talent) and you will have no more then 2-3 useful talents/ abilities to choose from that may involve you having to use a useless pet that will get slaughtered as soon as it enters combat front line combat. Now if you picked a spell caster you get to do almost all of the above plus rain down hell on your enemies with fire/ lightning or you can summon, heal, buff, confuse, charm, petrify, paralyse. ......? No brainer

IMO there aren't really any strong builds right now. Sawyer and his team have successfully concluded there agenda of nerfing the **** out of everything. The name of this game should be changed to " pillars of balancing". Rogues and wizards play there roles extremely well, all other classes apart from rangers are quite balanced if you ask me, with rangers still being ridiculously pointless. Don't get me wrong I love the game but if I could get a job as a producer with the obsidian team on this I would: - make magic items more meaningful; seriously about 95% of the items you find in this game are complete oxygen wasters with token powers like a cloak +2 athletics or unique weapon that let's you engage +1 opponent. Magic items in games like this are supposed to be the spoils of hard worked adventure, not crappy insignificant cantrip poppers. - make the abilities and talents more significant and meaningful. Level ups with most classes achieve nothing of note and does not give you any talents to chose from that will make a significant difference to combat. Level ups are not rewarding enough. - path of the dammed is the only difficulty I needed to cast spells on and even on POTD only now and then. Give you wizard/ priest/ cipher/ druid an arquebus and BOOM you win. No need for spells just join the pillars special forces navy seals to eradicate all terrorists that you may find. Solution to this problem = make more boss type fights

Hi ALL Firstly would like to say a huge thank you to obsidian for making an AWESOME game. My favorite since BG2. Can I please bring to your attention: RANGERS ARE INCREDIBLY UNDERPOWERED AND BASICALLY OBSELTE. For the following reasons: - They have only one ability that differentiates them from all other classes capable of using ranged weapons; swift aim. This is the only ability of substance. All other ranger abilities are mediocre and almost useless. - A Rogue and a Fighter who specializes in ranged combat is far more affective then a ranger. - The rangers companion WILL DIE as soon as it enters front line combat in a medium difficulty fight. - The only other Ranger ability that looks promising is stunning shot, though is useless for the above reason. This is also a high level ability. EG mages can stun/ confuse at very low levels and don't require a rodent to run around to enable it. - I have finished the game on hard and you can hardly tell the difference between a mage/priest with a ranged weapon compared to a ranger. PLEASE OVERHAUL RANGER. THIS IS RIDICULOUS . HONESTLY!

does anyone no where you can purchase the expansion (or prepurchase?) I cant find it on steam or the obsidian website? Bizare