Arddv

There are actually only two unique rapiers, but five flails and four staves.

The most cool looking armor in the game is a regular faction specific clothing, that you can't even enchant!!

I think fighting style bonuses are a bit outdated and redundant concept. Of course, it feels good to have a passive that rewards you for doing what you would be doing anyways without any drawbacks. But it is overused and is not cool anymore. Full attacks should be a reward for dual wield in itself, there should be no speed bonus. Just like 2h should have better base damage and penetration. As I see it fighting styles should be some modals that activate when you have a certain talent and a certain combination of weapons/shields equipped. And these techniques should not be availible for each combination, with several exotic ones even being progression-gated (taught by NPCs, learnt from ancient monasteries etc). Some weapons like daggers should not be able to attack in off-hand at all, just provide a relevant "sword and dagger style" bonus (for example +deflection and full attack riposte on grazes) and be used in full attacks.

I'm playing Bleak Walker so intimidate was an obvious choice. And I don't feel the need for diplomacy or bluff, although there were couple occasions I wished I had better insight. So I think focusing on any one of diplomacy/bluff/intimidate + insight is optimal.

I think there's a finite number of pyrite in game and I haven't seen it in shops, just like adra ban. The most recent place I found pyrite in is the Woedica temple from the Oswald quest - it has three or four pieces, two of them are in hidden stashes and require a perception check.

Very interesting discussion that was iterated times and times again on different gaming forums for as long as PC gaming exists. Basically there is one 'parent' dichotomy and numbers of sub-dichotomies that spawn from it. The main question is: 'Should the game be an emergent thing-in-itself that gamer dives into to extract whatever experience he wants, or should the game designer decide what experience and when is delivered'. The games of first type are redundant, unbalanced, require lots of resources to produce, require player to spend lots of time to immerse, to gain metagaming knowledge, and often fail commercially. Second type of games are easy to produce, easy to consume and easy to sell. To find balance here is hard. These different types of games even target differet 'gaming needs' and while I was absolutely fascinated with IE games when I was 12, now I can't bring myself to starting, say, Divinity series, as it will require the efforts/time I cannot spend on gaming. As much as I would love PoE series to go all-in emergent and complex wordlbuilding and mechanics-crafting I understand that I simply won't have time for all this undoubtly marvelous experience. So compromises need to be made. PoE hit the spot for me, PoE2 seems to go overboard judging by beta feedback (too streamlined and spoon-fed) but we'll see.

Why can't we have both? And why can't dungeon crawlers learn a trick or two from story-driven RPGs and vice versa? I will buy both Torment and PoE2.

My take on Tyranny. + World and character presentation is definetely better. I don't know if it has something to do with more vibrant and bright colours, or cell-shaded character models, but the game feels more alive despite obviously laking any depths beyond first glance. PoE looked more ...bland. - Extreme railroadedness. Without much spoilers I can only tell that there is only ONE meanigfull choice in this game and it happens in act I. To add insult to injury, there is zero exploration. You go to some place only when plotline tells you to go there, you kill everyone, and never come back. Never. - Hybrid of classless skill-based system with unique companions that are their own classes is a nice experiment, but has no place in PoE2. In short, there are three classes: Two-hander DPS machine, 150+ Lore blastermage and Sirin. Everything else is for flavor only. + Spellcrafting. I definetely do not want it to replace vancian system, but there can be a class that utilises it. There's a lot to do for this system, like making every combination less genric, but overall it is a good direction.

Well, thanks for information! It turns out Chill Fog + Painful Interdiction that I used in almost every fight on my first playthrough are the best trash mob debuffers. )

So, to stack buffs or debuffs on some stat, you should use spells/abilities that target the stat itself + the ones that target the group of stats it belongs to (as a single effect). I know only two groups that can be targeted as a whole - 'all defenses' and 'all DR'. Maybe there's some effect that targets 'all attributes' but I haven't seen it.

Considering this information, the best combination of non-disabling debuffs would be Blind + Weakened, am I right?

So basically Veteran's recovery + Shod in Faith + % healing buffs make a 'solo package' for any martial class?

Hmm.. For example: enemy is Stunned, he has -30 def/ref and -4 Per/Int/Dex. If he is paralysed after that he gets -40 def/ref and -100 Dex. But do -4 Per/Int effects stay or the buff gets suppressed as a whole? Another example: if our given enemy is terrified and blind (diferrent 'categories') what his accuracy penalty will be?

It seems we have the whole 3 gods of secrets - Ondra, Wael and Woedica herself (sort of), among which Wael is the most.. bland.

Hello everyone. Title says it all. When an enemy is afflicted with diferrent debuffs that target the same stat does the game suppress all but one (like with the buffs) or do they stack?

I agree that Abydon and Ondra were extremely well-written and rather inventive, but others seemed... a bit generic. I mean Berath is basically D&D Kelemvor and I didn't read Skaen lore books, but from his dialogue in Sun in Shadow I assumed he is Cyric 2.0.

You can, actually, make yourself an armor with dragon's scales. It just happens that in PoE this is translated in terms of the Superb and Legendary enchantment. This robs it of the feeling of uniqueness. I wish in PoE2 we will be able to 'Dragonize' (by analogy with durganize) armor with some truly unique enchantment, with diferrent dragons types providing diferrent enchantments (white dragon scales, adra dragon scales, and only 1 per dragon).

Well said. I own DA:I but I played the game for 2-3 hours and then found out that I can't refund it (don't remember why, something with preorder). So I contributed to it's commercial success, but just can't force myself to play it. It tastes like wet paper. But it was a lesson for me so I didn't preorder F4. Shadowrun series were much more satisfying despite its simplicity.

Examples, pls. I undestand what you don't want, but still have no idea what you actually want. The passage I quoted seems unrealistc a bit, like 'peace in the whole world'. What exactly you want ex-vancian wizard, priest and druid to be and not to be capable of? It is 'magic' after all, it does 'magical' stuff that is impossible to reproduce in non-magical ways. Should wizard be capable of flinging fireballs, teleporting around and creating layered magical defenses? Or should a priest be able to ask his diety to grant him power to smite the hordes of undead? Explain your vision of magic and it's place in cRPGs. I have a subtle feeling that behind your arguments about balance and mechanics hides the eternal 'magic vs mundane' dispute.

First of all, you know well enough that a dissatisfied customer is times more likely to voice his opinion than a satisfied one, thus we may view you and others asking for change as 'vocal minority'. Also, let's have a constructive argument here instead of a 'popular terminology-slinging', trying to point out the lack of 'evidence', shifting the 'burden of proof' and so on. Second, balance. As I understand you consider that casters are wastly more powerful in PoE than non-casters (which is debatable by itself, any class can solo the game) and want to bring their power level down. But why don't you want to bring non-caster power level UP? If the balance among classes is the thing a well designed game needs why not make every possible build of every class OP? Besides, none of the classes in this game is underpowered relative to difficulty, there are only varying degrees of overpowerness (the game is pretty easy after all). My main point is - if every class is balanced around the idea that they should be able to overcome the same obstacles with the same resourses and time investment then there's no point in having diferrent classes at all. The only thing that diferrentiates them is the VFX and color of the abilities. Like in DA2. I advocate for classes to be asymetrically balanced, with having power spikes at diferrnt levels, diferrent strenghts and weaknesses etc. And with asymetrical balance there are always classes that perform better at any given time. I see nothing wrong with casters performing slightly better by the endgame. In this matter, PoE is better balanced than most RPGs IMO.

And at the same time those armies and dragons can be singlehandedly defeated by some monk that wanted to become a farmer couple months ago. Admit it, only casters somehow mess with your suspention of disbeleif.

Magran is some sort of Jeanne d'Arc / Athene hybrid.

For balance changes I would like some love for rogue archetypes besides full-DPS rogue we have now. For example high burst low sustained-DPS rogue focused around Backstab. Right now the only burst rogue has is 2 attacks of Backstab, Envenomed strike and Sap. And neither of these tools are even relatevely near dualwield+crit full attack setup. Make these skills have additional effect or have plain better damage if rogue uses 1 1-handed weapon and nothing in other hand. Make shadowstep enable backstab on every hit during it (no invisibility, just backstab enabler) and reset on kill during it if used with 1 1-handed weapon. The same with Riposte Rogue. Riposte lacks synergetic enviroment to have a build centered around it. Oh, and Shadowstep bugfix of course - the one that makes it become modal and glitch the cursor.

These are good suggestions. If you want to limit a spellcaster's power in encounter introduce 'magic endurance' that they can spend per encounter with the ability to supercharge in critical encounters to cast using health when endurance is depleted. But... better introduce new class - Warlock and shape his spells around the theme of great power at the cost of self-damage.

Maybe because they are the core audience? ) On the topic. Where your personal dissatisfaction with vancian casting comes from? You can't play other calsses because casters can do same things better or what? This is the single player game so you are basically palying it with yourself. Why do you so desperately need balance among classes when the only balance that matters is the player vs enviroment one?