mosspit

If you make a sturdy enough char you don't need to Split pull so much, just a bit at the beginning of the game. After, expecially if you let yourself use figurine, you just don't need it anymore, expecially with barb. With other char you just have to not be surrounded and you are fine, also if some fights will require some times. My best solo playtrough where with chanter, monk, barb and an Ice variant of the bilestomper build of boeroer. The most needed thing is a way to do aoe DMG, in fact play with warrior or pala is doable but a bit boring since every fight is during veeeeery long Yeah I forgot to add I'm not to keen with kiting as well. But I get what you mean.

Nice build Boeroer! I tend to stay away from the idea of solo as I imagine it involves heavy pull-splitting. But if it involves mainly positioning, I might be open to the idea of doing one after my current playthough. Unless Obs decide to patch something and invalidate the build of course

On paper, too many melee or even an all-melee party will create problems like bottlenecking. In practice, it is not that bad. This is because the game more or less already caters for large fights, especially on the higher difficulties which basically involves increasing the number of mobs in encounters. Of course, it isn't perfect and bottlenecks do happen. But you will find that majority of the fights are fine, or can be led into more spacious areas. I personally like melee parties a lot with my last 2 playthroughs having 5 melee and 6 melee respectively. Currently I am doing a full melee party playthrough as well. Just be mindful of positioning and bring reach weapons. Full melee does expose the pathing issues though lol. PS: I like melee not because it is more effective or anything. I just enjoy melee combat more than ranged.

I would recommend: Getting Weapon Focus. At the very least on the offtank. And get it early where it can contribute the most Your Darcozzi Pally needs to take Liberating Exhoration before Inspiring Liberation becomes available Have 1 pally take Zealous Endurance and the other Zealous Focus. Early game the extra acc and DR is beneficial and give good mileage. Late game, the acc and DR gets suppressed very easily but the graze-to-hit and hit-to-graze conversions effects becomes more pronounced Critical Focus effect is very weak. I'd rather not take it Both pallys getting Coordinate Attacks can result in buffing each other Spare talents can be placed into the +10 to Will/Reflex/Fort saves talents Btw if you are interested in having a Rogue, get Blinding Strikes if you have do not have easier ways to apply Blind. I used Crippling Strikes as I have a Druid who can cast Sunbeam. Hard CCs aside, Blind is the most debilitating status effect you can apply on enemies.

@Kazuma: I was suggesting my build as you were seemed interested to play a tanky rogue following the prior posts. Although the build is viable, you will not be experiencing the true strength of a rogue, which is a single target DPS monster. I used this build as I had already experience the dps rogue and wanted to try out other variants. As some has mentioned, stats allocation is quite forgiving. It is not easy to royally screw up a build in terms of stat allocation. This is because there are other item options and strategies you can employ. So imo play what is fun for you. No reason not to mix and match custom and story companions too. You can get Eder, Durance, Aloth and Kana very close to the start, and Hirvanas, Sagani, Pallegina and Grieving Mother after Maewald. Just to add: besides not being to change the stat allocation of story companion, the first level skill selection is also fixed. Pros is that they start close to your level as opposed to custom companions start 1 level below you.

I never really used Devil much but if I am not mistaken, her "body" armour can't be swapped and for its DR class iirc it is heavy. Reason I don't like using her is that she comes a little late, about level 8. She is gated behind a few annoying enemy types. I like confirming my party composition near the start, but that's just me. As Devil's body armour has high DR, she is naturally suited as a more tanky class. So the usual talents: Weapon and Shield style, Cautious Attack, Escape etc. If you are considering to push up her deflection then Riposte might be worth it along with a bash shield. I am using a Rogue MC with high resolve and defensive talents and so far she is ok for an offtank despite Rogue having poor starting defensive stats. Only beef with her is that Riposte is not triggering as much I want but that is partly due to not equipping a suitable shield. I am only level 7 as I restarted my Trial of Iron game 2 times. My skill choice are: 1: Crippling Strike 2: Weapon and Shield Style 3: Escape 4: Cautious Attack 5: Riposte 6: Shadowing Beyond 7: Dirty Fighting My choice of talents is mostly based on what I feel is needed or suited at the point of time so it might not be optimal.

Try https://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-193-update-notes-303/ with this hotfix https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87689-303-beta-update/ These are patch notes for beta but from what I read from other comments, the beta and live version are the same.

@Kazuma: Yes the limit of 8 custom companions is still in place so that creates a restriction by itself. No idea how much of the story do you already know but of all companions, Aloth and Eder has the potential to be missed. For Aloth: For Eder:

Tbh, you can just use custom chars and swap in the story companions as and when to progress/complete their personal subquest. Those personal subquests don't require alot to complete. You don't miss out on too much except for the banter between certain party members.

I am currently using a rogue as a MC but leveraging heavily on Riposte. As such, she is in an off-tank position with high RES and PER. The byproduct of this build is that she can pass quite a number of dialogue checks which is quite nice.

I personally did a playthrough with a melee Cipher on 2.03. Nothing too fancy, played him in a style similar to a rogue with dual sabres/stilettos. It was pretty smooth-sailing for most parts. But yes, the focus generation does becomes notable in signature fights. You need to either use the fodder mobs as Focus batteries or if you are attacking the main boss, make sure to be careful as the Cipher doesn't have as many escape mechanics as compared to a Rogue. New patches have spells like Reaving Knives that can help with that (it is a high level spell though).

Sorry I don't see raw facts. Just highly opinionated remarks. I have done a playthrough without spell casters (meaning no priest) and limited consumables so I disagree with the bolded part At this point, I get the sense of ithe issue at hand is not about the Barb being effective or not but something a little more personal. So that is usually my cue to bow out. So have fun bashing

Sigh..... Although we are on this thread that was started primarily for advise to newcomers, the ones giving advise on barb mostly gave it in a such a way that are is viable for PotD playthroughs. AoE cc barbs using weapon crit effects are completely viable on PotD, although to be more effective one can choose the proper Weapon Focus, Accurate Carnage, and above average investment in PER. You can also choose to more DPS focus by wielding weapons like Tidefall and shift point investment over to Mig. With the receent buffs to Barb, Heart of Fury and One Stands Alone especially, they are even more effective and fun. I personally have used a CC barb in at least 2 playthroughs, have you given the Barb a chance at a whole playthrough yet?.

I think there are worse things to take offence at. The discredit was done by your own advise, Boeroer just pointed it out. In any case, this isn't the first "barb is weak" debate on this forum. Heck, not the first I have seen Boeroer be involved in. Strength of the barb comes from his/her high survivability, and more importantly carnage and how weapon effects can propagate through it. Only thing as others said, it takes a while for a barb to shine simply because the barb is weapon dependent and alot of the strong weapons come late. But pls do try a barb with decent int wielding prone/stun-on-crit weapon, high interrupt weapon with interrupting blows, or Redeemer... it might change your perspective.

Another approach is instead of going for massive CC to lock down all the enemies in order to protect the squishier classes, is to build a much more durable team that can survive in melee for a long time and grind up the enemy. A team that has 1-2 Paladins (Pellaginna does fine, possible MC Pally), 1-2 Chanters (Kana does fine, possible MC Chanter), 1-2 Monks (Zahua and MC Juggernaut or Witchdoctor), Barbarian or Rogue and a Ranger or Cipher. Basically a frontline of at least four with no more than two ranged guys. Since there are not any casters you can roll until you need to rest for health and with four front liners you can hold the injured back a bit and let the others carry the injury load more evenly. Get the Chanter Regen chants, some good DR, the Zealous Endurance aura (hit to graze helps a lot when you have high regen). A reach or ranged weapon on switch is also good in case the field is constricted. You can use a Vancian caster in one of the ranged slots as well, just try to conserve spells so that he is not controlling the rest intervals. Yeah I just started the following party, mainly just because I didn't play these classes with my first playthrough. Chanter - Tank / Summon / Support Druid - Tank / Support Priest - Tank / Support Monk - Hybrid Tank / DPS Paladin - Ranged Gunner DPS (trying this out, 3-4 gun switching, not sure how it will work out) Ranger - Ranged DPS (Stormcaller + 2 gun switches) I'm hoping this will work, it's much more durable with 5 melee including the animal companion + 2 ranged DPS. Lots of support and durability but not too much micro. They will be often in the way in narrow passages. Normally 2 tanks + pet are more than enough to block the way to your range heroes. And a paladin as range dps? I don't know if that works well. You should rather play a range rogue instead, dishes out good damage. It's not nearly as bad as one would think. For the past few playthroughs, I have been using melee parties and I generally don't find narrow corridors being too much of a problem. I personally prefer melee rather than range combat and all of my chars have decent survivability to at least handle a single engagement. You can usually lead fights into more spacious locations. Also weapon swap to reach weapons (or ranged weapons in your case).

Besides the point whether scrolls are needed or otherwise, there is the fact that as skill levels go higher the point investment gets steeper. Although as much as Survival is preferred, it will eventually require 10+ points to raise it by a single level. Those 10 points can alternatively be used to level Lore by 4 (assuming no prior point investment). Scrolls at the very least can offer some flexibility in terms of their effects. Athletics effectiveness taper off quick, Stealth is not useful (at least for classes without backstab mechanics) unless you want to avoid battles and the party generally only needs 1 char with high Mechanics skill.

Yeah I kinda remember seeing that issue in the Technical Support forums a while back. But didn't put to mind as I wasn't that interested in bash shields then. Now that bash shields have more variety and nice effects, I am planning to use them and hence my questions. Slightly annoying but I guess I can live with it.

Well this is my list: 1. Better dual or mulit-class system I applaud the effort to include this aspect in PoE but I would like like more integrated version of this, more than just having a cross-class skill to choose from. Not exactly familiar with D&D rulesets but from my layman's point of view, it will be separate levels for each chosen class. Or other ways to make it do that ties in with level progression. 2. The presentation of suppression effects I am personally alright with effects being suppressed but I would think it could be more clearly presented across. Currently, I am finding myself loading up test saves to try out abilities in mock battles to check if things get suppressed or otherwise. 3. More transparent attack speed presentation Others have explained clearer than I could. Keep from existing: 1. Party size of 6 Please don't drop the party size. It is already increasingly difficult to find rpgs that has these kind of party sizes. Maybe other developers want to reduce the micro needed. But some of us appreciate the bigger party size. 2. Game modes and difficulty I really like the fact that there are quite of number of difficulty and toggle-able modes to choose from for the gamer to customize the difficulty suitable for him or her. Personally I am having a blast with Trial of Iron and like the fact that others who detest it can just avoid selecting it in the first pace.

Thanks for the input guys. @MaxQuest: I guess I can treat GF as somewhat of a contingency. And good to know on Dual Wield talent. Not a dealbreaker for me I guess. @Boeroer: Good to know that Inspiring Radiance didn't change.

Hey guys, So I just started another playthrough and wanna check up on some stuff. 1. Does Gallant Focus stack with Blessing? I read somewhere that it does but I did a test by loading up a 2.03 save and GF got suppressed by Blessing. If that's the case any idea what can GF stack with? Wanna decide if it is worth taking on a Chanter. 2. Is Brute Force worth it? Previously I know that it is nice as Sickened and Weakened stacked. But now I read that the status no longer stacked (in terms of lowering of Fort), something like how terrified takes precedence over frightened. 3. Does wielding a single handed weapon and a shield with bash benefit from Two Weapon Style Talent, also does this combination enables Full Attacks (eg. Knock Down and Heart of Fury)? Thanks in advance.

Well a pally can be a solid (and arguably better) tank. A tank with great support abilities, saves, immolation, early Outworn Buckler the whole shebang. But I played a main tank pally for the past 2 playthroughs (more if I considered my failed playthroughs too) so a Fighter tank doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Hmmm actually the Vita Essence potions are not a bad idea. at least for those mid tier fights.Rather chug those then setting up rest camps. Guess my main tank is gonna be Eder... those new 3.0x abilities are quite sick.

Yeah I kinda figured that, so an off-tank position then. As a main tank the health issue could come in during signature fights.

So... how viable is a riposte rogue tank for signature fights? I like the concept of it, but I would think there will be some issues. Riposte is nice for extra dmg but it doesn't mitigate dmg by itself, and for a class with not many class specific defensive options.. And rogue has low base health (low modifier to Health per Con) so the rogue could run the risk of running out of HP even if sufficient healing is provided, especially for lengthy fights. I am guessing it suitable of more of an off-tank position?

I played a melee Cipher in my previous playthrough and was already using Amp Wave and Echo sparingly. Mainly as way to get trash encounters over and done with. I find it more fun to use the other stat modification spells and it compliments my self attacks in signature fights. Trash mobs has always been straightforward. But the issue will arise when you enter extended fights with tough bosses. Focus generation there is really lackluster. I feel that the focus nerf is to keep them on-par with the other spellcasters' mastery spell changes. But I feel it might not be necessary in the first place. Cipher Focus has already been nerfed enough previously (Focus gain per level halved, Draining Whip changes). Not reason to further mess with Focus resource management. Cipher I feel is a "sustained" spellcaster as compared to the other spellcasters who are more "bursty". That is what set them apart... But right now their abilities to do "sustained" casting is also becoming questionable.