Braven

There are certainly reasons to ignore History as a front-liner. There are other good cloaks that requires no stats and you could max a different secondary stat instead, such as intimidate. Instead of Gift-bearer, which provides 15 defenses with 20 history, you could simply wear a cloak of greater protection for only 5 less defense. Or you could go greater deflection cloak for +7 deflection, and then invest those skill points into a different skill that scales equipment. Since 90%+ of attacks target deflection, having extremely high deflection provides larger benefits most of the time. Before gift-bearer was nerfed to provide half the benefits in patch 1.1, it was the obvious choice, but now I think it is just one of multiple options.

Yep. Both rest spamming and no rest are good. The worst is the intended behavior: resting occasionally. The sad part is that the most logical/realistic option is the least rewarding. No rest could be easily solved by adding fatique that builds up or have it automatically happen while sailing. Rest spamming can be lessened by having bad things happen if you waste too much time. I don’t see why the plot should pause forever; ignoring the dire threat to the world could result in a lot of material harm to the player. Doubt Berath would like you rest spamming.

I wish, for balancing, instead of making duel-wield slower, have it come with accuracy penalty. That would better define each fighting style. Currently duel-wield can be better than single-wield for crits because the faster attack speed allows more hits and chances for crits. Having a faster speed but lower accuracy helps to make it have strong DPS, but poor for critting. I would like: 1-hand: best crits 2-handers: best penetration Duel: best DPS against lower armor/deflection.

A fast weapon will be better than a slower weapon for generating crits because you will get more opportunities to get them. There is an item that further increases the speed of fast one-handers too. My pick would be rapier for maximum crits. The weapon modal increases accuracy in case you need more. That said, there are way more swords/sabers to be found.

I have thought about making a 3 per paladin tank that just uses branded enemy abusing the fact it has no accuracy roll. Multiclass with another class for more spells and then just do nothing but heal/buff. MIGHT/INT/RES can be maxed out while per/dex is dumped. Druid has the most powerful DOTs. They are made even stronger by alchemy buffing poison spells. This makes plague of insects the most powerful DOT spell of all. Big AOE, raw damage, and massive accuracy/damage/duration from 20+ power level boosts. Quite a few enemies are poison immue though, so it won’t always work. Luckily, druid has a wide variety of damage types they can inflict. Returning storm is good for the stun effect, but it only hits one enemy at a time making it far less damaging than other AOEs. Anything that has multiple accuracy rolls will do better since they are less devestated by a bad roll. One thing the consider is that fortitude tends to be the hardest defense to hit, by quite a bit usually. Also, some spells have terrible penetration. Chill fog, for example, has really low penetration. It is still a great spell, though.

PL levels are normally the difference between the “tier” of the spell/ability and your current tier. Some, but not all (yay inconsistency) abilities you get as part of your class mechanics that you didn't explicitly pick are considered ”tier zero”, and begin with a +1 PL bonus. Why do you need built-in power scaling for an ability you have at character level 1? Greater Lay on Hands is not actually an upgrade, despite having the exact same healing effect and a very similar name as Lay on Hands. You can tell because the non-upgraded version still shows in the ability bar. Abilities like monk’s lightning strikes replaces swift strikes completely, which is how you know it is an upgrade. Same with branded enemy and sworn enemy. Sadly, nothing in the UI lets you know before you pick if an ability replaces an existing ability (keeping the lower tier for PL scaling) or is actually a completely seperate ability that just has a requirement of owning the proceeding ability. I think the “bug” is that the devs made Greater Lay on Hands a seperate ability when it should, in my opinion, have been an upgrade instead. It just makes intuitive sense that it is an upgrade. Also, upgrades should appear different than non-upgrades in the user interface so you at least know what you are getting. I wish abilities with upgrade paths were always treated as upgrades and not seperate abilities and that the base ability is used for power level scaling. That would remove a lot of the confusion and lack of transparency regarding mechanics and make the upgraded version always better. While options are always nice to have, they don’t come free. Upgrading costs a valuable ability point, which could have been used for something like a +10 passive fortitude which stacks with everything all the time.

Upgrades are not always strictly better. Sometimes the extra perk just gets suppressed or is not needed and the original effect is worse due to less power levels affecting it. Paladin Lay on Hands is an example of this. If you were already getting the inspiration bonus from another source (or don’t need it), you are better off just not using the upgrade at all since it will heal for less and not last quite as long due to PL. This is not consistent by the way. Sometimes upgrades do benefit from the original power’s tier as far as PL goes. “Branded enemy” paladin upgrade is one such example. BTW, Branded enemy doesn’t get a lot of love here, but it can be quite powerful. It lasts forever ticking away and hits 100% of the time. In theory, you could just dump perception and intelligence and kill every enemy in the game that is not fire immune with just one cast of the branding. Just need to find a way to not die. I was doing about 11 damage a tick with it at level 7 with no PL boosters. With the cheap zeal cost and near instant cast time, you can just cast it on everyone at the start of battle. I learned how deadly it can be when NPCs cast it on my normally unhittable max defenses build.

Well, if truly stacking defenses to the max, I like the bloody links armor that is available early. It is cheap and provides +5 to all defenses when bloodied. The bloodied part doesn’t matter if the extra defenses causes you to be unhittable when you reach half health. “Effect when Bloodied” is kind of the new replacement for “effect when critted” that was a prevalent strategy in POE1. Only, instead of minimizing deflection you still want to max it. There are a few items that get better when you lose heath and some increase defenses significantly making them work well with a tank. Then there are things like streetfighter who really want to bloodied and a wizard spell that provides huge bonuses when bloodied and the human racial that provides benefits. Stack them all together and a “purposefully bloodied” build can come together. For shield, there is a large one that provides up to 20 bonus deflection, based on remaining health. That one can potentially be stronger and doesn’t require dumping all your skill points into athletics. Also gives you the smart inspiration for some extra INT. Problem with buffing intimidation is that you are not buffing history for the giftbearer cloak.

Just out.of curiosity, do we know what the max deflection build is yet? Can you actually reach 200 deflection or is the functional cap closer to like 120?I have gotten over 230, however you start really giving up other defenses at around 215 and that is really enough deflection anyway. Getting those numbers certainly takes some cheese, like never resting and stacking one-time bonuses that expire on rest. The hardest part is increasing the other defenses which is particularly important if using Wizard’s Double. Reflex and Will are fairly easy to boost up, but fortitude can be hard. This is why I think that helwalker monk / wizard is able to get the best overall defenses. 10 wounds provides 40 fortitude making it superior to paladin, particularly with the F&C nerf. I also use the pet that provides +8 fortitude instead of one that helps deflection. I plan to post a build showing how to do it, but still playing through with it. Basically Fortitude > Deflection > Reflex & Will. Another advantage of monk is that you can purposely hurt yourself to lower your health to a very low amount safely. Some items provide scaling benefits based on your remaining health (more benefit the less you have). For example, there is a large shield that provides up to 20 bonus deflection based on remaining health. Getting it to 18-19 makes it quite a bit better than the one based on Athletics.

Because multiclassing was one of the new features everyone was looking forward too, I think the devs over-tuned that option so that players would be encouraged to try it out without feeling they were gimping themselves or missing out. Just making the 8-9 tier powers stronger relative to lower level ones is probably the easiest way to make single class more powerful without significantly altering the game mechanics.

If more visual effects are added to items, I think there should be an option to turn them off for those who don’t like them. Similiar to pets and helmets.

Just out.of curiosity, do we know what the max deflection build is yet? Can you actually reach 200 deflection or is the functional cap closer to like 120?I have gotten over 230, however you start really giving up other defenses at around 215 and that is really enough deflection anyway. Getting those numbers certainly takes some cheese, like never resting and stacking one-time bonuses that expire on rest. The hardest part is increasing the other defenses which is particularly important if using Wizard’s Double. Reflex and Will are fairly easy to boost up, but fortitude can be hard. This is why I think that helwalker monk / wizard is able to get the best overall defenses. 10 wounds provides 40 fortitude making it superior to paladin, particularly with the F&C nerf. I also use the pet that provides +7 fortitude instead of one that helps deflection. I plan to post a build showing how to do it, but still playing through with it. Another advantage of monk is that you can purposely hurt yourself to lower your health to a very low amount safely. Some items provide scaling benefits based on your remaining health (more benefit the less you have). For example, there is a large shield that provides up to 20 bonus deflection based on remaining health. Getting it to 18-19 makes it quite a bit better than the one based on Athletics.

Yep, it is viable. Solo play might cause problems because some enemies are poison immune so you have to fall back to something else like returning storm which is not as strong and they will just kill you too quickly at high difficulty. If soloing, I would prefer a multiclass because you need a better “plan b” option since you must deal with every encounter without additional help. I created a druid/priest build here on the forums called Lord of the Flies specifically designed for soloing at high difficulty. If you have a party, Either single class or multiclass is perfectly viable. Multiclass will always be strongest overall since you lose so little by doing so and gain so much. Single class is only technically best if you want to focus more on spells since you get the better ones sooner allowing for a stronger mid-game, particularly if abusing the alchemy trick to the fullest. Getting plague of insects four levels sooner makes levels 9-13 stronger. The druid healing spells are also really great for group healing. Patch 1.1 greatly increased the healing radius of the level 2 one so that it has a base size of 8m. I think that is the largest AOE in the game. You could start off by casting that, then shift and fight. Then later shift back and refresh the healing zone when the duration runs out. Alchemy makes all druid builds/subclasses equally strong, so you can be a different one.. Shifter is strongest in the early game, for sure, and I think the most fun. I have never played bezerker or barbarian, so can’t comment there.

Paladin was nerfed. Passive is now max 15 with deep faith instead of 21 like before. I agree that skill scaling items should be capped instead of just requiring more skill points. It is still possible to stack defenses such that enemies can’t hit you. I have done so even without paladin. (Monk/Wizard). While some items, like the skill scaling were nerfed, others were not nerfed. Notably ones that require “bloodied”. Turns out being bloodied or near death is no problem if enemies can’t hit you at all so those items really only help a min/max and do very little for a balanced build.

I think shifter is a lot of fun. It is probably the strongest class in the game early. You can always shift back to human to cast spells. The claws might fall behind fully optimized character later on, but think of all the gold you can save by not boosting a weapon set to legendary. Though, you will be hard pressed to find a better weapon than the cat form’s claws with cat’s flurry active. Even if you did, just can give it to a companion instead. Martial class powers can be used while shifted making paladin/rogue/fighter/monk/barbarian good multi-class options. Your animal attacks are always treated as “duel wield”, meaning that cheap full attacks are good to have. Paladin is my favorite with shifter. Kind wayfarer can heal the druid and nearby allies with flames of devotion while also attacking in animal form. Paladin defenses and resistances help make up for the fact you can’t wear items that do the same thing. Note: monk fists are not used and does not help animal form attacks if you were thinking that. Pure shifter is an absolute power house if you invest heavily in the alchemy skill. Each point in the alchemy skill increase the power of your poison based spells. This means you stay top-notch in DPS all game. For level 1-8, you will be extremely powerful using your animal forms. Starting at level 9, you can use the plague of insects spell buffed significantly by your alchemy skill to cause massive harm to your enemies. It will kill things so quickly that the potential late-game scaling issues of animal forms not having items won’t matter at all.