Braven

Wow, I didn’t know that. I like playing at lower difficulty at the beginning, so I can gather items or companions (and level up a bit), then ramp up difficulty to max. Basically keep it lower to solo easily until reaching the capital since that opens up all kinds of looting possibilities and the (non-annoying) companions. Eder is cool, but I pushed him into the pit of doom in POE1, so I don’t have him available to help tank the first island.

The wound abilities I feel have always been quite bad, with the exception of the Twins. Thunderous blows was really nerfed hard in 1.1. It is now only 12 seconds and costs 3 wounds. I think it used to be 20 seconds and 1 wound. That is a lot for just a one inspiration self-buff. I think I would rather have +3 might, +3 int/con, and armor/damage (from the wounds) instead of +5 might from a short-lived inspiration; not worth the ability point. Prone is really lousy in this game. They just get right back up immediately regardless of how much int you have. I only use monk to cheese things with blade turn / dance with dance, and for the passive wound bonuses. I really don’t see the point of shattered pillar. If you are not taking damage, you should use dance with death for wounds and if you are taking damage, then you can just be a standard monk for wounds. If you want a renewable resource for CCing enemies, both cipher and chanter are better at it than monk. Whispering treason costs basically nothing and charms for 20 seconds while torment stuns for 4 seconds requires a harder accuracy roll, becomes available much later in the game, and takes 3 wounds. Both won’t work on boss enemies because of either immunities or insane fortitude defenses.

That is my issue with debuffs. Why debuff and maybe miss when you can just buff yourself instead with 100% accuracy. Also, the cast times are near instant for single target buffs making them obviously better for solo play. Missing is a lot worse now with limited resources and long cast times. I think swift strikes is fine even nerfed. It is instant cast with no recovery, so it takes no time to use and it also comes with the quick inspiration. That extra dex provides 10 reflex and another 15% action speed (and helps spells too). So the total action speed increase is 30%. That is faster than frenzy and doesn’t come with the -10 deflection downside. The nerfs I don’t like are to abilities with a cast/recovery time. Nerfing those might make them not even worth using at all. At least swift strikes is instant and there is nothing else really competing for the power source. If people are bothered by slow action speed, why not just speed it up with the slider at the bottom of the interface? Isn’t that the same thing as reducing action speed, from an aesthetics standpoint?

I actually use duality mostly for the Con bonus. I find fortitude to be the hardest defense to ramp up. Will/reflex are easy to get to high levels. Remember, +10 stat increases are also +20 to a defense. Helwalker can get +40 fortitude that stacks with everything on demand. This makes them a very strong multi class for a tank. None of thier tanking related skills were nerfed at all, unlike paladin, in 1.1. I think Per instead of Int would actually be better for monk/wizard, unless they only ever cast buff spells (granted, a very valid option since wizard has great buff spells). The biggest danger of debuff spells is having them miss so accuracy is more important than duration. Consistancy is better than max potential since your “average” performance should be enough to win, at least if you don’t want to die whenever you have a streak of low dice rolls, so reducing your “bad luck” is paramount. Since you are very limited on the number of casts, you just can’t afford misses. With melee, you will swing several times so some low rolls don’t really matter; you just attack again. Miss both casts of a spell you rely on and you are doomed. INT is really good for AOE buff spells, or anything without an accuracy roll and helps priest and druid a lot; particularly healing over time ones of which druid has several. Those benefit a ton from both might and int making helwalker a perfect multi-class. Perception would nerf that, but the extra might is still nice. I think most of the healing spells were nerfed somewhat with 1.1. No matter what stats you gain from duality, a multiclass combination will benefit a great deal from it. Only way around it is to nerf it to like max +5 max. But I think monk has seen enough nerfs.

The nerfs that bother me the most are ones to abilities generally thought as weak already. I was looking through abilities that I usually ignore and found that many are now even worse; not that it really matters since I still wouldn’t use them anyway. Why further nerf something that is already universally thought of as bad and would still be bad if left alone? The thought process seemed to be that “anything that does X type of effect gets downsized” (even if it is not really that powerful) and “anything someone in the forums have been vocal about recently” also gets nerfed. I also don’t understand when something is nerfed heavily, but the power cost and level requirements remain the same. If you are going to make something weak by over nerfing, at least make it cheap to use. Unbending and time parasite are good examples of this. Who is going to spend three discipline on what now amounts to a weak healing spell on par with on lay on hands most of the time? Why are all the low tier powers still the best use of resources from start to finish and the end game powers not even worth spending an ability point on when you can finally have the option to learn them. What is there to work for? Might as well just load up on all the passive abilities instead of the higher teir, over-priced and under powered abilities. In some ways, balance is even worse now. If it was truely everything getting nerfed, then it would be the same as just buffing all the enemies. However, though a lot was nerfed, many things were not and some of those things are just as powerful as the ones nerfed; they just were not talked about as much because they were not as much fun as uber nuke builds or machine-gun level attack speed build, or were simply overkill given the easy difficulty. As a result, they slipped under the radar. Regarding only nerfing: If abilities are made so bad that you just skip them for another passive, that is a problem; it makes the game less fun since another visual effect is effectively removed from the game. Take away all the toys and boring stat boosts like bears fortitude become better than wasting your level up selections on higher tier abilities that are worse than the lower tier ones they already have Winners of the patch? Spellcasters. They basically didn’t get hurt at all. While the martials had their core abilities nerfed, spells were largely untouched. There is no way to avoid the nerf of FoD for kind wayfarer who relies on one ability, or Faith and Conviction for all paladins. Wizards, however, can easily work around the few nerfs they got. Even if one spell is nerfed, there are still others equally strong on the same spell level not nerfed at all. I hear people lamenting the Priest’s devotions of the faithful nerf, but I always considered Triumph of the Crusaders to be superior anyway. It is the strongest heal spell in the game.

Yeah that shield is really good, max of +46 deflection That shield pairs well with Casita Samelia's Legacy armor. That armor has an (easy to get) upgrade providing Will defense that scales with health loss (up to 20 will), to make you even more invulnerable with will defense. That armor is good anyways for a tank since it grants a +5 base deflection bonus. Now, you could use intimidate to increase the deflection further, though it was nerfed to be 4 intimidate for 1 deflection (but if we are lucky the bugs with it were also fixed). Because the gift-bearer cloak was also nerfed to require twice as many points, this makes using a cloak of protection an interesting alternative. With the unique vendor blessing, you can get a cloak of protection in the first town that offers +10 to all defenses for only a few hundred coin. With 20 history, gift-bearer now provides 15 to non-deflection defenses; only 5 more than the cloak of protection. This opens up the option of instead getting 20 intimidation for +5 additional deflection with the Casita Samelia armor. I would rather have 5 extra deflection than 5 extra non-deflection defense. You could also swap that cloak of protection with the cloak of greater deflection, also available for cheap by that vendor, for when you need more deflection instead of other defenses giving you more flexibility to pump up the defenses you need for a particular encounter instead of being locked in on the gift-bearer cloak because you invested so much into it. That cloak was not nerfed and still offers +7 deflection. I checked the Paladin F&C nerf. It now tops off at 15, so a loss of 6 to all defenses. That is enough, I think, to encourage using Monk instead of Paladin for a max defenses build. The helwalker monk gets +10 Might and +10 Int/Con with max wounds. This amounts to either +40 Fortitude or +20 Fortitude and Will in stats. The flexibility is really good since some fights you will only face one or the other and can switch your defenses instantly. Or just switch to Con after casting your buffs. If crucible of suffering activates, you end up with a +70 passive defense increase. In comparison, paladin has +60 total passive defense increase now. But it goes beyond raw numbers; monk has a much more equal distribution. Paladin/Wizard has a hard time increasing fortitude and an easy time maxing out will and reflex. Monk can play around with starting stats more, like lowering intelligence, because the bonus INT from wounds will compensate. Likewise, dex is less important with swift strikes. Those points can be shifted into Might/Con for higher fortitude and duality can be switched to CON instead of INT if facing fortitude attacks that can't be reflected. The net result is 15 lower deflection, but better overall "other" defenses, which tend to be more important since there are lots of ways to buff up deflection anyway. I did the math and you can reach an "untouchable" level of deflection without Faith and Conviction, unless they have increased enemy accuracy by quite a bit (I haven't heard this said). Monk synergies better with tanking items. Paladin has basically all worthless abilities beyond Faith and Conviction, as far as solo super-tanking goes. You don't want to heal, you don't need resistances, etc. Monk can control exactly how low in health they want to be since they can inflict wounds upon themselves with an ability (Mortification of Flesh). This allows you to maximize the benefit of the shield and armor enchantments that scale on health. Monk/wizard, even with the nerfs, has much higher DPS than paladin/wizard can ever dream of and has an infinite supply of wounds and extra accuracy thanks to dance with death and will be reflecting lots of ranged attacks with soul mirror for extra damage. Human's Fighting Spirit (+12 accuracy) combined with dance with death (+12 accuracy, if still capped) should provide enough bonus accuracy to hit enemies with illusion debuffs like blind. Good to target at enemies you can't use your melee-only deflection boosts against to ensure you don't get hit and to help your soul mirror proc.

Checked giftbearers cloak and it was nerfed to be 1 defense per two history. So basically about 10 less “other” defense with maxed history. Not a big deal since wizards can avoid many of those with spell reflection anyway and paladin/wizard was already overkill in reflex and will and gave up on fortitude. Basically just means having to abuse per rest food like the birdsead to reach the same levels again, which I didn’t do before. The bird seed was not nerfed and also helps deflection too. The strongest shield was not only untouched, but actually buffed. No, I am not talking about the athletics one. That one was sub-optimal even before since it means a solo character can’t invest in mechanics. I mean Bronlar’s Phalax. It still provides up to 20 bonus deflection and requires no skill investment. The catch is that it scales lost health. However, you want to reach at least 50% to trigger safeguard spell anyway and, once you are un-hittable, you might as well stay low on health. This works great with other things that want you bloodied like the human’s Fighting spirit passive. Also comes with free smart inspiration saving you a spell cast. Now it is better because shield quality enchant was buffed. Superb used to be +3 and is now +6. So basically, the max deflection possible is unchanged as far as I can tell. You can still get over 220. A couple minor items loss a point of resolve, but shield base deflection is better making up for the loss. Key shield and abilities were not nerfed.

Looks like every major fight get mage with arcane dampener, so no, it's kill or be killed. Also, interruption everywhere.Well, interruption only works if they can hit you and your spells are all near instant cast anyway. Arcane dampener targets will defense, I believe, which is likely to miss a super tank that does everything possible to boost defenses. I need to look over all the changes, but I think it is still viable unless the AI got a lot smarter, like blasting you will magic missles that can’t miss. Update: looked over the abilities and none of the abilities were nerfed for the paladin/wizard super tank. Displaced image was nerfed (now only provides 10 deflection and 30% graze to hit), however the only part I cared about with that spell was the +20 reflex which is unchanged. If i want deflection, arcane veil, mirror images, and wizard double are better anyway and none of those were nerfed. Spell reflection is unchanged too. Safeguard is still as OP as it ever was. illusion debuffs avoided nerfs. Looks like really only the pure evoker was harmed. Monk was hurt a lot in DPS, but monk/wizard tanks were unharmed; they just want the free INT/CON for boosting will/fort depending on the fight and you can still spam blade turn and dance with death to be invulnerable in melee.

Looks like they were mostly focused on taking the fun out of all DPS builds. I am downloading the beta now, but I imagine the tank builds like Arcane Knight (paladin/wizard) are fine as long as the deflection spells are still intact. My build had plenty of defenses to spare, so a couple item nerfs won’t kill it. If nothing can hit you, damage output doesn’t matter rendering the other nerfs meaningless. Just takes a little longer to kill everything. Big question is if enemy accuracy went up. I have mostly heard that penetration and armor were adjusted, which again means nothing to the super tank.

How has deflection stacking fared? That was the most OP thing in my mind since you could get defenses so high that nothing could even graze you and have deflection to spare. Most of what I have seen mention are the offensive abilities being nerfed. Deflection would need to be nerfed quite a lot to really break those builds as I had like 20-30 more than needed with one of my builds. Both the wizard spells and tank items would need steep nerfs to break it. Nerfing alone ultimately won’t really make the game balanced because they will certainly miss some things, maybe combos that have gotten less attention because they were ever so slightly worse or less interesting that the “mainstream” OP builds. It will just result in less build options. I think a better strategy is to mix in buffs and nerfs in equal measure; that way you switch up the meta and allow use of powers that previously saw no play because they were just underpowered. With only nerfs, the bad powers still won’t be used and instead continue to use existing powerful combinations that managed to evade the nerf bat. The only result is less viable options.

Druid has 0 poison spells tehy are decay labeled spells, who knows if poison specific powerlevel items work for them. And if they are its rly wierd they are not worded as poison while counting as it. I tested the Druid spells with "counter: anti-venom" (example: level 1 vile thorns) and they do gain the extra power levels from alchemy. I don't know why they don't list poison as a keyword, but the description clearly implies poison.

Druid and wizard have at least a couple poison spells each. Druid has a bunch of decay ones. Not all poison attacks have the poison keyword, but they usually have the countered by antidote text. I imagine this armor would combo well with Alchemy since that skill increases Poison Power Level by one for each point... you could have around 25 poison PL for both massive healing and damage using poison AOE spells. I think friendly fire is possible with Druid's VenomBloom and both of the Wizard's poison cloud type spells.

How high was your Alchemy? Did you do the theoretical max for fire and poison? I think I remember there being an armor that actually heals you if you are hit with a poison attack. Druid with alchemy should result in the highest single spell damage. The base damage of Plague of Insects is 90 raw over 30 seconds. Because PL increases both duration and damage, in theory it would do over 1000 AOE damage over the course of it's duration with high might/int/alchemy.

Good Question... I don't think I will risk it. The next best after that is probably either Durance (save a couple stats in con) or Eder (if you care about deflection and don't care about losing your starting companion). I don't have much respect for the +5 defense to a specific affliction... too specific and many other ways to gain resistance or immunity if really needed.

I only see 6 poison spells, but some are quite bad. Wizard has one at levels 3 and 5, and Druid at 1, 3, 5, and 6. I guess Wizard and druid multi-classed would be best for a poison specialist. Or go pure druid to get to tier 5/6 faster. If you play with the unique vendor blessing, you can get the potion belt for +2 alchemy and free potions every encounter that would be ideal for a poison and potions build.

Ehhh - a crit increases stacked penetration by 50%. So a PEN value of 10 will get lifted to 15 on a crit which often leads to overpenetration or prevents underpenetration. This is not negligible. But it also works for weapons with blunted criticals like arquebus as well. Because of this crits are always nice. I'd say crossbow is a decent choice. Only the single damage type is annoying for a Devoted. War Bow is also a good option. I personally like the arquebus + modal + max reload speed, too - despite the weird blunted criticals. In the early game it's so satisfying. Good point, if you get over pen, than it is actually 55% (not considering other crit bonuses you might have).

Carnage should work fine shifted; all the passives do, you just lose item bonuses since they are unequiped. Shifter is best multiclassed with a martial class (barbarian, monk, rogue, fighter, paladin) since you can still use those class’s abilities while shifted (they are not considered spells). PL and Might helps the free heal after shifting away from an animal form. Only character level is used to determine the animal form weapon and armor scaling, so that is not hurt by multiclassing.

I haven’t play barbarian, but I don’t think less int will really hurt a shifter. I never run out of duration and you want to shift fairly often for the free healing anyway.

I am kind of annoyed by that, as passives were supposed to be for conversation/roleplaying, not combat; yet they can have more of an impact than active skills in combat.

There are good warbows. Then you don’t have to worry about the reload animation bugs and can even kite if you want with the hit and run ranger passive ability instead of gunner. A hunting bow with rapid shot actually has the best DPS in the game, if you don’t consider item enchantments or possible armor penetration issues. It has higher base damage than warbow and is faster. The main problem is that there is only one unique and it is not that good. The warbow enchantments are much better so they are clearly better because of that, if you have knowledge of available weapons. I really wish there was a more equal distribution of each weapon types.

I went down a similiar journey as you and eventually settled on paladin / druid (shifter). This combination gives you a lot of flexibilty and options without requiring you to use any of them in any given battle. You have 5 different animal forms to switch between, or you can just stay in human form. The armor of the animal forms keep you tanky and you get 5 free Heals when you switch, so you can focus on attack powers instead of healing ones. Sounds like you like the bleakwalker dispositions and that work well with shifter since you can use paladin powers while shifted to rip people apart with flames of devotion. If you need healing, just switch to another form or return to human form, depending on if you want to use your paladin or druid powers (always use paladin in animal form and druid in human form). I personally find the myraid of options, which all costed zero ability points to access, makes the game more fun and engaging to play. Animal form is really powerful when you want to attack with flames of devotion (or normal attacks) because you get essentially heavy armor with zero recovery penalty. Also each animal has a unique ability that costs nothing. One prones an enemy, another speeds up your actions (even spells) like monk swift strikes, another frightens enemies, etc. Plus, you get all the usual druid spells to further round out your character. This also works well with any other martial class like fighter or rogue if you don’t like the paladin disposition restrictions.

Rangers can get the gunner passive ability making reload weapons good. If you combine it with a bunch of other reload reduction items (they all stack), the reload time is quite low. Because reload time is currently bugged (you can’t go lower than around 3 reload time regardless of equipment), I recommend the biggest gun with the +20 accurracy modal active (later after getting all equipment to reduce reload speed). Then you get the best of both; the highest accuracy and best base damage. You will need to steal Maia’s armor and wear a hat for maximum reload reduction (so no godlike). If playing with a party, keep a chanter around for thier chant that reduces reload. Another option is to look for a weapon with on-crit effects. You will have really high accuracy regardless of weapon as a ranger and it would be nice to do more than just just a small damage bonus. Crits, base, only do +25% damage now and I think that is additive math (though not sure) so it is pretty negligible later on. A special on hit effect may be more beneficial. Devoted is a trap if you don’t know all the weapons available and where to find them. Some weapon types only have a single unique option. Take a look at the wiki if you want to know what the weapon possibilities are.

Light armor for ranged and heavy for melee is a good general rule, but it can depend on other factors too. If you have really high defenses, you don’t need as much armor because you won’t get hit as much. If you go all out defense you can just wear light armor (that has a defense boosting enchantment) since armor is useless when everything misses. You can also ignore your defenses and just go all out armor so that everything has the 75% damage reduction from not penetrating. Armor gets better the more you stack because a 3 point difference can mean a 75% reduction with high armor while at the same time it could mean no difference if you have middling armor. Paladins can actually do either of the above strategies since they are capable of both huge defenses and huge armor because of thier abilities. Druids can shapeshift to get heavy armor on demand, so if they are primarily a ranged character, you can skip armor and just shapeshift if targeted by enemy fire. My paladin/druid MC does both. Holds a dagger and large shield with prof. modals activated and defense boosting equipment while “human” wearing no armor to keep casting speed fast. While a bear, she gets around 15 armor to make up for losing the equipment that was boosting defenses while still having no recovey penalty. I think ultimately the unique enchantments out-weight any consideration of armor type and many of them also reduce recovery time too. Just wear the armor with enchants you like later in the game and synergize well, regardless of class.

I posted a paladin/druid build. They are very nice because the paladin powers all work while shape shifted (as shifter subclass). Monk is good for the same reason, trading better health management for higher dps. At least for the shifter subclass, all the “martial” classes are best when subclassing since you can’t use “spells”.

My proposal for making debuffs better, without being over powered, is to simply reduce the cast time. Single target debuffs should be near instant; maybe a little longer for deflection ones since multiple characters can target the enemy. AOE debuffs should be faster than casting damage spells, AOE buffs, or “hard” CC like paralyze and charm. I am not sure why wizard gets instant buffs, yet debuffs have long cast times and require an accuracy roll unlike buffs. Unlike buffs, none of the duration is wasted because, while enemies die, your character are expected not to. Thus buffs run thier full course. Also, no accuracy is needed for buffs so you can dump your perception and hold a large shield without penalties if you are the party buffer. Debuffs should be better than buffs because debuff specialists will gimp themselves if they dump perception or use a shield.