Dr <3

I'm playing too a similar druid ( the only difference is that i also putted 16 in const to have a better health and survive alpha stikes, he's named Honey Badger because he doesn't give a sh!t about anything) and having a lot of fun. He is sturdy but as a shapeshifter can do otrageous amount of DMG, with wounding lash on top. I used a "corrode" theme also if Spirit of decay actually do nothing for your spells , if you want to really Power play him the best is go for flaming wildstrike, scion of flame and have as friend a Priest ( Champions boon, devotions, crown) a Chanter ( another +25% flame lash) and a paladin for suspend evental affliction and Emergency healings. Adding also a self cast avenging storm you can reach about 350 DMG PER HIT ( hi rogue with deathblows!), Just for saying you can slay Trolls with 1 hit. Best DPS in game hands down. At this point i really hope there is a shapeshifter subclass for druid in poe2, and if you can add some kind of carnage picking a couple of lvl of barbarian it will be just crazy.

He was just a poor fire godlike slave from the far Ratatuai lands, since one day something new happened... His boss beated him a bit too much, and his body started to glow like fused iron! His boss panicked and started to hit him even harder, and in a few seconds he was completely carbonized. So he ran away seeking his own liberty, and decided that killing while being hit will became his main business in life. =================================== The ANVIL (beacause he got beaten like that) =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 3.05 (solo or party) -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Monk -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Fire Godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Ratatuai - Slave (!) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: (base) MIG: 18 (+1 from gift of the machine) --> 19 CON: 18 (+ 1 ratatuai, +1 Rymgrand boon, +4 iron circle, +2 yen wisper sword, + 3 caed nua resting bonus, +2 food, ev +1 from durance in the pool) --> up to 32 DEX: 4 PER: 15 INT: 15 RES: 7 (+1 weapon, +2 armour) -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 3 (0 base; +1 monk, +1 blooded hunter, +1 dungeon delver) Athl. 9 (3 base, +1 monk, +1 slave, +2 long march boots, +2 caed nua resting bonus), Lore 0, Mech. 9 (8 base, +1 dungeon delver, + 2 with mechanical gloves on demand), Surv. 12 (9 base, +1 slave + 1 monk, +1 Rymgrand boon , +2 on demand with sanguine plate) note: slave is an important background,since with this array + story talents we can reach: 11 mechanichs when need (so we can discover all the march steel lingots and disarm nearly all traps) 14 survival befor resting (so we have access to healing mod + 60%) higher atletism as possible (good free heal every fight, expecially when combined with +60% healing resting bonus) -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Veteran recovery (!) --> absolutely the first thing to pick Vulnerable attack (!) --> absolutely the second thing to pick, since the only retaliation we have in the beginning is battle forged, and the damage in the eraly levels is so wimpy that gets all eaten by armours, without this talent Scion of flame (!) Gallant focus Cautios attack Bear fortitude Apprentice sneak attack Body control / wound binding / whatever + story talents : dungeon delver (!), merciless hand, rymgrand boon (!), gift machine (!), blooded hunter, heaven song, eventually trow durance in the pool ® Abilities Transcendent Suffering 4 (a) Battle forged (a) Torment's Reach (!) Turning wheel (!) Soul mirror Rooting pain (!) Duality mortal prsence Crucible of suffering Iron wheel (!) Weakening blows / Flagellant path Second Whind (a) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (!=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Yen wispers sword + Steadfast (or doubled Yen whisper with helwax mold if playing with party) Weapon Set 2: Fists OR double torch for fun Boots: Shood of faith / long march boots Head: n/a Armor: Plate --> Sanguine plate --> Coat of ill Payment (!) or Ryona Brestplate in super late game Neck: protection mantle (+9 to all defs) or Hiros mantle if wearing Ryona brastplate Belt: Girdle of mortal protection (!) / Looped rope (vs booses) / Binding rope (if not solo) Rings: at start: ring of sering flames (!), ring of protection-deflection, late game : Iron circle (!) + ring of deflection/protection OR still ring of sering flames; Hands: Blood Testment ® or Ryona vambraces or gauntlets of accuracy Quick slots: Potion of flame shield (!); potion of healing, potion of infuse vital essence (if you want to skip resting) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hi again! This is my personal spinoff guide of the valiant monksterslash by Boeroer! The guide is based on my solo run, but can work greatly also in a party, in the case a priest or a paladin for emergency heal will be your best friends. The plan is to compress as much constitution and defence to obtain a very sturdy char that kills by retaliation effects. From lvl 4 it is actually unbelievably strong, and see enemies burning to death while trying to kill you make me laugh more than it should. At max lvl we can reach about 600 hp (or anyway more than 500 when not fully buffed), that means that at HALF LIFE we STILL HAVE between 300 and 250 hp, wich is the value of a "normal" tank hp (and usually in the middle of the combat we will also have between 30 and 40 DR). This, paired with monk's natural boosted defences and our healing effects (veteran recovery and shood of faith) boosted by the rest bonus make you very hard to kill. Actually the boots of long march are better than shood of faith, since we need to reach half life to activate battle forged and start kicking ass, and the shood can "overheal" you and be less beneficial than though. Dex is at minimum since we will have unlimited wounds to spam torment reach all day long, which is a full attack. Our "retaliations": - battle forged : this is the strongest one. At max lvl we have 32 base dmg (41 with our strenght). Adding the mods from scion of flame, turning wheel lash, testament gloves lash you can reach about 100 dmg every time you get hit, about 130 if you manage to crit. WORK WITH : turning weel, blood testament gloves, vulnerable attack, weakening strykes (apply weaken), DOESN'T WORK WITH: apprentice sneack attack ( so sad ) , savage attack - Item retaliation (coat of ill payment/ Hiros mantle) WORK WITH: turning weel, blood testament gloves, vulnerable attack, weakening strykes (apply weaken), apprentice sneack attack DOESN'T WORK WITH: savage attack - flame shield (potion) WORK WITH: turning weel, blood testament gloves, vulnerable attack, weakening strykes (apply weaken), apprentice sneack attack DOESN'T WORK WITH: savage attack - rooting pain : 12-19 dmg in aoe every time i got 10 dmg? very strong! But consider that in late lvl the huge armor on every enemy WORK WITH: n.a. DOESN'T WORK WITH: turning weel, blood testament gloves, vulnerable attack, weakening strykes (apply weaken), apprentice sneack attack, savage attack (note : At the beginning of the game you can also use sura supper plate to add another retaliation effect that stacks with all the others.) At the end of the game (lvl 16) the relative accuracy are: - battle forged : 100 accuracy vs deflection (burn dmg) - item retaliation : 84 accuracy vs deflection (pierce dmg) - flame shield : 110 accuracy vs reflex (burn dmg) - rooting pain : 100 accuracy vs fortitude (crush dmg) Some notes: - weakening stikes apply weaken quite often. This is good for us, since it means +15% dmg for our normal strikes and most of our retaliation (too bad it didn't work for battle forged). Moreover it helps a bit with landing rooting pain hits (since it hits fortutude). - our atletism + healing multiplier heals for more than 100 hp, so is like to have a free big violet potion every combat (ctually with +60% heal modifier big violet potion heals us for about 160 hp) - we can reach in combat between 30 and 40 DR, so the girdle of mortal protection do a great job for us, since he take care of the spike of dmg that can fly high over our DR. EDITS: 1) Some loot in the beginning At the start of the game we need to grab asap the following items: - Rymgrand mantle : gilded vale tavern, day 2 --> thank to this we can kill all the shadows and spectres in the main all simply by our retaliation (if we are at least lvl 4 and have vulnerable attack). Really, see shadows and spectres dying while you are permastunned is hilarous. - Gloves of manipulation : Roedric keep in the chest of the bedroom, day 4 --> when soloing mechanics is never high enough - Ring of sering flames : Roedric keep in the hidden stash near the cell of the guy you have to free, day 4 --> see next point 2) About Ring of Sering Flames This items is super strong with this build, and need a dedicated space. Combusting wounds gets triggered by : standard attacks, targets caught in the cone of torment reach (!), targets caught in the AoE of rooting pain (!), target hit by our retaliations (items [up to 2 if you use also sura supper plate], battle forged, flame shield). So as you can see you can easily just run in the middle of the fight, get completely surrounded, cast combusting wounds and watch people burning to death. It is strong from the beginning to the end of the game, because as the game progress we can stack up more and more retaliation effect, multiplying the triggers. And you can find during your run 3 or 4 of these, so you will never run out of the spell (you can change an "empty" ring with a full one before a fight). Actually you can even substitute weakening blows with flagellant path to teleport yourself just in the middle of the fight to ease the process. The only "problem" is that the spell targets endurance (usually the most high defense around), so against very tough targets is better to cast it AFTER pumping our accuracy (eldrich aim potion or similar effects) 3) Rooting pain DO NOT "transport" effect like weakening ecc to more enemies Q&A Boeroer: You didn't say anything about Combusting Wounds + Rooting Pain (you have the Ring of Searing Flames). In theory it should be pretty powerful. If you catch 10 wounds that would mean 10 parallel CW DoTs in an AoE. Or doesn't Rooting Pain trigger CW? Would be too bad... Did you ever experience that Rooting Pain's AoE accidentally "transports" effects like prone or weakening in an AoE? updated

I asked the question. Really hope that they will manage to do it ( a proper balance ). My real ray of Hope is the beta testing with early access to the players: at least the most obvious and abusive combos should be ruled out before games is completed.

Multiclassing will be the most difficult thing to balance of the entire game... Shapeshifting druid + carnage/torment reach? Wizard + deathblows? Paladin + dragon trashed? Too many imba possibilities...

I think that is impossible to consider backing anything that not include "early access"

Lol 3000$ for my own spell... Very tempting...

Lol he played the game so much that finally have his personal companion

Btw: anybody dechiphered the symbols?

Or maybe they just forgot an "l" or Hel means actually "hell". Would make sense: ethoas "quenched the flames of hell" ( actually hell or a reference to godshammer) and came back to Life to finish the job, pissed like only a God can. Actually we don't know the reason of his First personal crusade, maybe the sequel will light this mistery ad well.

After that you understand the rules of the game the ultimate run is not about "easyness" but about "how much time i want to spend to do it". If you do 2 parallel saves, 1 with trial of iron and One without, you can just try every encounter until you find a bomb-proof strategy, After that performance it with your trial of iron One. And you have to rest very ofter and be very careful all the run, so it will take at least 50%-100% more time that a normal run. And still some things can ho wrong nontheless, and maybe you die for Extreme bad luck and you have to start all' over again. I did it only once with a Chanter, and was not actually too "difficult", most of the time it was just boring because you can't afford to take any risk and have to play thery careful. TD,dr: always a great achivement to get, but it is always a giant investment of time, more than skill

I belive aedyr Empire is the today image

This One is aedyr Empire, wich is at the moment at the brech of falling

I still think the best one is the Chanter, but i also think that wiz is one of the best candidates, much over the paladin

Today we got another vailian paladin from the five suns order?

If i know Durance, he will just try to kill ethoas a second time, but this time with his own hands, without the guidance of his ex flaming bitch. But My love will go to the poor Eder, that probably will have to partecipate to kill his own god another time... We will se the "dyrwood greetings" in first person

I actually think the returning companion teasers are over now, and now they're teasing other aspects. I reckon this might be teasing a new faction. The quote uses 'we' instead of 'I' and talks about bringing law to this land. I think his might be our Knights of the Crucible kind of faction. At least One companion teaser is still "missing" for sure... I can't belive the good old Durance will have nothing to say about the return of the god he slayed himself!

Ah , ok, i misunderstood the First part, thanks

I bet also that this One is a new companion. Should be a pirate of some sort

Wow, so finally the dual wielding sabre ( flames of fair rihan) Fire wizard genie theorized by Boeroer will see the light, powered by 0 recovery between the rain of fireballs.

Also other archmages!

It's called "spoiler"

He was very devoted. PS: but consider that actually he was a pretty bad-ass priest, since he used spells (es:cleaning flames) that were too high lvl for you (in the vanilla game). But storywise he was mainly a behind the scenes pupeteer, not an Epic warrior not a legendary wizard

Where is the countdown? Megahype for me Btw, ethoas back with steroids!

Food : i eat everything before battles in solo. Expecially beer (+2 Dr), chiken +2 con, meat+2 str, pie +2 dex, fish +2 int. I always like to carry also some farmer cream ( sobstitute of meat for +2 str And an awesome +1 to speed). Sugar at the beginning is fine too for running faster when needed. Also whiteleaf is pretty useful, for the long lasting fear immunity ( useful vs dragons, xaurips and human priests). Potions: everything violet or yellow, more bigger than I can. Also potion of alacrity, llengrath displacement can do wonders. Potion of vital essence can also heal your total health, so if you have stacked some resting bonus using it 1 or 2 time per fight prevent the need of testing. FLame shield potion is useful if you are beaten a lot or in a retaliation build ( es: fire godlike monk). And obviously the red potion from the burning sands are OP (+15 accuracy for a good time + something else) Scrolls: paralyze, valor, defence. Occasionally something other, but not much.

The build is in the "provisional builds" thread. I did Also a similar run, worked out pretty well.