DreamWayfarer

Aloth being a Wizard is actualy a reason to also make the Watcher one,since you can learn spells from one another.

It is not the impression your posts gave me, but OK then. Caster are OP, that just means we need to compare barbs with other martial classes or with "partial" casters instead.

Wizards are probably better at burst spell damage, for the simple fact they can self-buff. Druids, however are very fun and much more flexible when things don't go as planed, due to getting all their spells on level-up instead of being limited by grimmories. Just remember to attack the weakest enemy defenses first and not forget to debuff them. As for builds, you can make your druid a normal caster, picking the +1 spell and elemental damage talents, turn them into temporary melee monsters by picking talents that boost spiritshift and unarmed damage in general(except novice's suffering) or take a shield, hatchet abd talents that boost deflection, for a frontline battlemage that can unload all those cone spells right on the foe's face. In terms of attributes, INT rules. Druids need PER more than other casters, since wizards have more ways off buffing their accuracy and debuffing foes, and priests are masters of buffing in general. All else is quite flexible, depending on your build, but I wouldn't dump anything below 8 unless I was making a third liner caster.

@theBalthazar: Aparently, you rest after every battle. If you try to keep going for as long as it is possible, you will see that your usual tatics don't work so well and that martial classes are able to contribute on a level comparable to the casters, even if the later are still top-tier.

If your monk isn't taking damage at all, you are just face-rolling the game either way and the only thing that matters is how fast you clean up the trash. Which Barbs do very fast. EDIT: and monks do have nice, spammable AoE. Torment's Reach. And your ranking seems to be based purely on your own playstyle, and not take into account tatics that are not "unload all your spells in a single fight, CC first, damage later". At least, that is the only way I can explain how you rank Monks and Paladins so low, and think Ciphers are only medium-tier. Ps: your explanation of why Fighters are supposedly mediocre focuses purely on tanking, so I assume you haven't built a damage dealing Fighter. Take a look at the "Glass Tsunami", or the "Lady of Pain", or for a tankier build, the " Engineer". Fighters are awesome.

It was nerfed.

@theBalthazar: You ranked Monks and Paladins as bad. While all classes you ranked as bad are viable and effective, if not downright OP when built well, those two are so strong your ranking lost the little meaning it had.

Prone, stun, paralyze... anything tgat stops the enemy from whatever it is trying to do, no "ifs" or "buts".

Chill Fog, if you plan to master "hard" CC on other levels or use Combusting Wounds a lot. Otherwise, Slicken is better when you need to stop a mob as fast as possible.

My druid with 9 DEX and 18 PER won half of the times.

Yes, I don't know where you got that from, brimsurfer. What people are arguing is not that the weapon is a physical manifestation of your soul, but that you and the weapon "share" your souls while bonded. And I don't think it has anything to do with them being enchanted to do so, most of the time. On the soulbound items I read the description of, it seens the enchantment developed naturaly, maybe as the item gained splinters and imorints of its wielders souls through history. If you need a reason for why you simply don't get the bonus without any weapon foci, remember that many weapons share some principles behind their use. Having knowkedge on some of those orinciples may make it easier to unlock the knowledge absorbed by the weapon. And I don't see how the recovery penalty on a soulbound armor applies to this discussion, as it is a completely different thing. No soulbound weapon strikes as fast as fists or benefits from novice's suffering, so I don't see why soulbound armor should make you as fast as if you were naked.

Paladin and Monk are a good choice. Both are sturdy, specialy the Paladin, and the per-encounter healing will help you make the most out of your monk.

IT IS INEVITABLE, MORTAL. BOW BEFORE YOUR STONY OVERLORDS.

Cats can deal with rodents, and are smug enough to think they are the owners of the house. You heard it well. The watcher is the Stewards pet kitten.

Maybe the weapon takes "imprints" of the souls of its former owners, so you end up getting some of their knowledge of how to wield it as well? It fits with what we know.

It is simple: the steward does not like her pet to sleep under the same roof as she does. What? Did you think the watcher was the master of Caed Nua?

The best part is that they buffed spiritshift so that it remains useful for the whole game, and if you dislike it, druids have enough base deflection for you to give them a shield and defensive talents to have a decent off-tank. @spell mastery: honestly, I liked the change. Attrition became meaningless after level 9 even if you didn't abuse rest-spamming, and the massive power increase of casters rendered all other classes superfluous. Now, things are a little better, and with update 3.0 they removed some of the trash mobs from wilderness areas.

Knowledge of how to make black powder cane much earlier than its widesoread use in war, and even then it took centuries for it to prove superior to the alternatives.

Yeah, I suppose you did leave it implicit with the "people who care about such things". If I had to fit Gandalf into any PoE class, it would be Priest. Good enough at melee after a couple buffs, force multiplier in any team and more holy than scholarly, fitting the wizards' true nature. EDIT: and fire. Never forget the fireworks.

I've never felt the class changes were major. They mostly buffed underwelming abilities and nerfed things commonly seem as OP, with a few overreactions that got mostly fixed later, like the major cipher nerf that was shortly followed by a major cipher buff.

He did conjure some fire... And LoTR is not D&D or PoE. If he calls himself a wizard, he is a wizard.

I quite like combat in PoE. I've never played BG or any other old-school CRPGs, but from what I've heard, I prefer the way PoE combat plays. The incredible number of ability sinergies and potential builds, the process of learning how to use the tools at your disposal to fight different types of foes, the complex yet balanced rule system, all those things are what I want in a RPG. Still, I understand where some who dislike the game are coming from. It is hard to learn, punishing to new players, and demands a lot of micro-managing. Not only that, but the game does a very poor job of explaining its rules. I play on the hardest difficulty without minmaxing, and for me the game is quite challenging, even if I've been on the builds forum long enough to know the weird way speed bonuses work and be able to tell if two effects stack or not. I have no idea how someone could call it easy, and am happy the folks of Obsidian added Story-Time mode for those who are less willing than I to invest their time into learning how to play more effectively. After all, the goal is having fun, isn't it?

How do monks self-heal?Items? And maybe veteran's recovery.

Darguls don't paralyze anymore? I was sure they still did back in 3.0 beta...

Why? Even my non-minmaxed damage dealing fighter with 8 CON and much less overpowered self-healing skills often must leave the fight because she is running out of health, while endurance keeps regenerating. I haven't picked it yet because I had other talents waiting, but it is a good choice for some builds.