MaxQuest

Thanks for posting these) P.S. Looking at Wrath of Five Suns, there is the "Counters: Water, Frost" line. Reminds me of elements from HOMM5 Dungeon faction). Interesting... how big will be the bonus damage, and how will it stack.

Afaik they did, in v3.05. Correct me if I am wrong: the patterns are probably still the same, but might have per-save or per-character offset. And yes, random loot is a bit annoying when it comes to important pieces. But at least we have console. As for PoE2: Source

Spells' casting (aka attack) duration is influenced only by DEX. Spells' recovery duration is influenced by armor, and non-weapon effects that take part from AttackSpeedMult category. Ranged spells also do benefit from RateOfFireMult effects. Pretty close. To be more exact: - fast: 35 frames (or 1.1666s) cast time + 29 frames (or 0.9722s) recovery. - average: 60 frames (or 2s) cast time + 50 frames (or 1.6666s) recovery. - slow: 120 frames (or 4s) cast time + 100 frames (or 3.3333s) recovery. I.e. at 10 DEX and no buffs/related stuff: recovery = casting duration / 1.2 (like with weapon attacks made without Single1HWeapRecovFactory penalty) But there are a few strange exceptions. Some spells have very low attack and recovery durations but seem to have an additional pre-casting phase, which is damn long. For example Eyestrike and Whisper of Treasons. Both are fast casts, and should have 35 + 29 attack + recovery durations. Yet it is 84 + 8 frames... On the bright side, these don't really care about what armor do you wear, as even if recovery would get doubled it would be a small 8->16 increase. Nope. Weapons enchants and properties do not affect spell casting/recovery durations. These gloves do decrease spell recovery duration. Nope.

Ahah) Cut the fishing! Unleash the Krakens!

I bet this is still the case. So if you want to do WM with that party, either do it before jumping into the pit; or make pre-pit save, copy-paste it to another location, do the pit content, then bring that save back.

At levels 4..8 yes they can work. Because you have +0.4 from whips that help you bypass DR, and because you might get: Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger + Sanguine Plate; + Two-Weapon Fighting for some decent attack speed. Plus rapiers and daggers belong to the same focus group. Another 'fast' and early game (1..5) alternative could be double stilettos. For example Azureith's Stiletto + Simple Stiletto. DR reduction is decent until you start getting high damage coefficients from weapon enchants. And for the mid game there is one more fast weapon: Vierina's Leaves. It has superb quality. And because it is on endless paths level 11, you can get it before level 12, i.e. before you would be able to enchant your weapons with that quality)

It's not that the fighters can't kill things. They can. It's the opportunity cost and being outshined by another class that can do their stuff maybe even a little bit worse, but while also doing something extra. For example: - a tank fighter can be substituted by a tank paladin. Which will also provide extra buffs and healing. - while a dps fighter can be substituted by barbarian, monk, dragon-thrashed chanter and depending on composition: melee cipher. And unless fighter spams scrolls, the substitutions will actually be more optimal as they either have higher burst, or can provide extra healing via shod-in-faith boots (coupled with high hp/low def), can buff or cc. Imho, a fighter needs something that would also benefit his team. Some kind of rally aoe buff, inspire resolve, or ability to rush to an enemy that has engaged one of your squishies and glance 1-2 of their attacks.

Dunno, pretty much everything? We didn't have enough bakers to reach that goal. Either it is due to the limited amount of fans of this genre, or they simply were not informed. - well, hmm, it felt a bit strange that the stretch goals pacing changed from 0.2M to 0.25M after the 3.0M mark. - the order of these goals. I felt that Sea Monsters and Ydwin as full companion (especially because of relationships goal) are more important than a talking Weapon. Partially because I've found soulbound weapons to be a bit suboptimal for pure dps'ers in PoE1(as they could not be durganized/lashed). And partially because we would probably get more weapons as rewards from those monsters, right? - same thing with Berath's Blessing. It's like Witcher's 3 New Game+ free DLC which became available 3 months after release. I mean it's something that is good to have, but it can wait. Personally I don't really care much about fishing. But that's because I don't quite know what to expect from it, nor do I have what to compare it to. Maybe WoW fishing? If so, then what's the point? I wanted to have sea monsters through. Like Kraken, Radiant Gulf Spore, Leviathans, Aqua Dragons, Sea Hags, etc. A series of very tough encounters with great rewards. Were some enemies are at max level, while others scale with your own + 3. Something like that.

Yay! And most importantly it supports multiple conditions and negation) All we need now is: - distance condition - ability to cast a ground/targeted aoe at the center of enemy group - (optional) duplicate behaviour feature

Well, one could write a long long wall of text on this topic. Without much thinking I will list the first things that come to mind: - pick a playstyle. Either go with all-sturdy party, or heavily specialize (such that each member is really good at 2-3 things without trying to be a jack-of-all-trades). - theses things include: body-blocking, per-encounter cc, per-encounter dps, buffing, per-rest stuff. - heavier armor slows you down. Often it's a good idea to leave backline members in just robes or even simple cloth. - since they are going to have low DR/deflection, you will have to take measures in order for them to not get hit at all. - usually this involves lots of cc and having a blocking frontline, consisting of at least 3 bodies. - frontline equipped in enchanted plate doesn't care much for small-hitting attacks of xaurips and such. - while the bigger threats should get instantly hard-cc'ed. - it's a good idea to stun/paralyze enemy big frontliners, while charming/confusing enemy spell casters / backline - the general rule is you charm/prone targets that you don't want immediately deal with; and stun/paralyze those who you want to focus fire (because of heavily reduced defences) or who found a gap in your frontline. - with enough cc, and decent frontline, your backline becomes safe to the point where you can heavily reduce their RES/CON, allowing them to become even more offensive, and as result end fights faster and waste less of frontline's health pool. Bonus: - I would advocate for enchanting your frontliners armor vs slashing or piercing. Crush dealing enemies usually hit for higher amounts and instead of tanking you would hard-cc them anyway. - If you want for shades to pay less atention to a specific character enchant his armor vs front. Also it's a good idea when you rush your party to attack, to unstealth frontline but keep backline stealth until enemies engage. - Find Shod-in-Faith that a great per-encounter heal. Give it to the most crited team mate (preferably with high health pool as well), barb or monk are just perfect. - Enemies don't care for how much damage a party member did; but they always factor-in the distance square. The farther your backline is - the less chance an enemy will abandon an engaged frontliner and will rush to your squishies. There are few scripted exceptions through, but not much. In this situations use hard-cc + focus fire. For example in your case, you might have the following lineup: frontline: Durance, Eder, Kana midline: Grieving Mother, Hiravias backline: Wizard The problem I see is that your composition doesn't have enough enough per-encounter damage prior to level 9. Another is that I really dislike Durance stat spread, because 19 RES is really asking for putting him in front, but 9 DEX along with plate armor will make him cast quite slowly. Thus you will have to have two equipment setups for him: one for regular fights and one for boss/hard fights. Decent/optimal builds for your party composition: - Eder: Lady of Pain could work because GM's CC and Huravias' Storms will help with survivability. But I would advocate for pure tank here, since you need someone to solo tank dragons, while your team burns him from afar. - Kana: The Drake's Ambassador suits him nicely. Plate. 1H + Small Shield. Emphasis on Dragon Thrashed chant and buffing scrolls. Party cc effects that also lower enemy reflex will greatly help in applying his chants. - Durance (per-encounter): offtanking with 1H + Small Shield. Plate. All you need from him is to cast Painfull Interdiction at the beginning of each encounter. - Durance (boss-fights): midlane with 1H + Small Shield. Durganized Robe. DAoM potion. Buff your party as fast as you can, after that throw Painful Interdiction and start spamming Shinning Beacons. - Grieving Mother: Plate + BotEP or Aloth's Leather Armor/Blaidh Golan + Llawran's Stick + Vulnerable Attack. - Hiravias: ranged spellcaster. If an enemy breaks to him, let GM paralyze and Hiravias finish him off in stelgaer form. Emphasize on Storms. Painful Interdiction will make it easier to stun enemies, while your stuns will make it easier for Kana to Dragon Thrash everything. - Wizard: since your party lacks on per-encounter damage department, you have to specialize in blasting with implements. In easy fights use Gyrd Háewanes Sténes or Golden Gaze. In harder ones: Kalakoth's Minor Blights. While in boss fights: unleash your spells.

It does. Although Death's Usher +0.20 vs enemies below 25% endurance translates on average into +1.66 MIG, which is a bit mediocre. And Bloody Slaughter has the problem described by MasterCipher. Overall I would probably consider this combination only on kindfarer paladin with sacred immonation.

I know that he said that about Death's Usher (Death Godlikes' racial ability). I never saw this about Bloody Slaughter. @MaxQuest: can you check? That would be worth knowing. Death's Usher + Bloody Slaughter for the win! Bloody Slaughter is still the same in v3.05. If you attack an enemy that already has strictly less than 10% endurance, you get a bonus 20% hit-to-crit conversion, and all your crits against that target get a bonus 0.5 to their damage coefficient. P.S. Death's Usher uses 25% threshold. P.P.S. Linking another related thread.

@De_jesus, if this happens really consistently, could you attach your save?

^ Well, I want to ride Eothas now)

That's a bug. Looks like it was introduced in 3.03 or earlier. For some reason ogre thinks he has no target and this ends the domination effect. Check for more info here. P.S. Now that you have mentioned it, I've reminded I had a similar problem with Alpine Dragon's Greater Ice Blights (v3.05). Charm effect was applied but didn't last for full duration. Ended up using scrolls of confusion instead. And funnily there is a hardcoded check for that (!aIController.IsConfused)...

That's strange. I remember I was testing this in January (although only marking + auto-attacking), and the rule was: "the target to receive +10 accuracy, is decided at the moment when paladin receives an 'attack order' on an enemy. The target (for the buff) is the closest party-member to paladin at that moment. If the paladin receives another type of order like: stop, move or cast some spell not on that target, the 10 bonus accuracy are lost." That could happen if: - wizard was closest to paladin - wizard is attacking an enemy target - paladin receives an attack order on the same enemy - wizard casts shadowflame - priest is quickly moved to be closer to paladin than wizard; and is issued to attack the enemy - paladin is issued stop and attack command - priest casts storm of holy fire Or maybe when wizard casted shadowflame, he received bonus acc from marking because that was RangedAoEAttack, hence attack, and immediately lost it because it was not auto-attack. And the next target to benefit from marking was priest.

- The stat spread looks ok. Although it would be better to max that MIG (at the expense of PER or RES), because priest deals a lot of damage via DoT spells, which benefit from both MIG and INT, and you want to increase their damage coefficient as high as you can. Plus the extra benefit to wounding. - You might want to check this build, which was also used for solo, and ended up with melee setup of Drawn-in-Spring/Steadfast + Little Savior.

Devs already mentioned that the default combat speed is going to be as Slow Mode is in PoE1. Plus some spells will take longer to cast, but will deal more damage.

Was kinda lazy to add checks around durganized fists, long pain + shield and such combinations. But finally did it. We have fists now

Agreed. And same thing with spells. Getting Llengrath's grimoire and finishing the game 30 minutes thereafter left a strange feeling. Blunt Wisdom looks like a great example of Infinity+1 Sword Spell.

Huh, that's pretty much my favorite composition so far. Although instead of melee wizard I used paladin sup/tank.

^ It was really easy to auto-buff in DA:O and DA:2. I can already imagine, delegating Frenzy, Painful Interdiction and Aspirant's Mark to the AI. Another great event->condition->action system would be the one used in WC3 map editor, i.e. "trigger".

It was told that it will be somewhat similar to DA:O tactics and Final Fantasy XII gambits: source

The questions is: do they stack additively or multiplicativelly

Blunderbusses are not an optimal choice for GM because of her average might. On the other hand BotEP would suit her perfectly. And yeap, ciphers can melee) Gladly there is no single weapon that would rule them all. Generally it all comes to the role and niche you want your cipher to fill. Ranged cipher would generate most focus (over a long run) by using Rain of Goddath Godagh Field and Cloudpiercer. Followed by Golden Gaze and Borresaine. Also cipher can make great use of quick-switching firearms if you are ok with extra micro-management and using the skip-recovery bug. Quick-switching blunderbusses (vs mid-low DR enemies, while having vambraces and penetrating shot) will result in a great burst and focus explosion. Melee cipher has two optimal options of going dual-Bittercut route or two-handing Blade of the Endless Paths. Less optimal, but also viable options include: Llawran's Stick (if your party has lots of melee, and you want to place your cipher into midline), Rimecutter/Strikehard + Shield and lastly dual Purgatory followed by dw Godansthunyr + Shatterstar. Related threads: - link1 - link2 Few things I find important to take into consideration: - eyestrike, whispers of treason, mental binding and ringleader have very short recovery duration. So it doesn't matter much if the cipher casting them is in plate or naked. - melee weapons result in higher (by 30-50%) steady dps and focus generation than any ranged variant. On the other hand ranged cipher doesn't lose time on closing the distance and can start building focus immediately. - attacking the enemy with heavily debuffed deflection (e.g. due to stun/paralyze/petrify!), increases your focus gain. - take note what powers do you cast the most. If it is mostly cc stuff, than you don't need high might, and would better reduce it to 10-12 and go melee with botep. Warbow and quick-switching ciphers through should have high might through. - it's best to have two ciphers. Because you could specialize one on cc, while other one (with high might) would mostly use damage powers.