TomReneth

So they have dps options. How about survivability? I remember Maia's hawk being a pain to keep alive, despite beinc immune to engagement.

How are the rangers and their pets in 5.0? My impression was that they were pretty bad early on, so i skipped the class. Having returned after all the DLC releases, i'm considering doing a ranger multi with Chanter. My experience with rangers back in the beginning was with Maia, whos pet i found more of a liability than help, though she was a decent ranged autoattacker with spells (geomancer). Have rangers improved since early on? Are pets worth the investment now? Or would i be better off jus going Ghost Heart and sticking to Marked Prey and Wounding Shot?

I'll give it a shot. AoE Burning Lash is definitely something I'm looking forward to; I always love having Kana around for that normally.

Hehe, no worries. In PoE2, I think a Harbinger with the Trickster subclass is a better option, since Bards are rogues in BGEE. Thematically, swords are definitely the way to go. That said, there's nothing stopping Blades from using other Bard weapons in BGEE either, so there is that. Sabres does seem like a nice option too, with Bittercut and sharing Weapon Focus with stilletos. That said, WF: Noble with Rapier and Dagger and Hyraff does seem tempting too. What about stats and talents? You mentioned a couple.

I love the Blade kit for Bards in BGEE and would love to play something similar in Pillars 1. I'm thinking the Chanter class is a good start. The general idea is a Bard that does better than normal in melee combat by dual wielding, supplemented by spells and who can do support with his song. As the Chanter can chant passively, they do this a lot better than the BGEE Blade. How would you tecommend i put my stats? Which chants and invocations are the most useful? What weapons are the best for dual wielding? Thanks!

Hei! I've been playing Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition lately and sort of fell in love with the Ranger class in the game, being a "wilderness warrior" with an Animal Companion and a bit of magic thrown in. I've decided I want to try something like that for my Watcher as I go through Pillars I and II, before taking on the Beast of Winter (Beastmaster in Pillars II). For this thread, I was hoping for some feedback on what would be a decent (doesn't need to be min/maxed) melee Ranger for Hard. I'm going to be playing as an Aedyran Human Mercenary for roleplaying reasons, so my racial and cultural modifiers are set in stone. I'd prefer 2-handed weapons over dual wielding, if possible. What I'm looking for is suggestions on: - Attributes - Talents - Class abilities - Animal Companion - Equipment

Hey, After getting a character to import (I thought I already had one, but I didn't, so: Hello, Dyrwood!) and having some fun sneaking about a castle and stuff, I found myself in a few ship-to-ship combat scenarios. The short of it is that I really, really didn't enjoy it as it seemed rather rife with RNG and, should I overcome that with some investment to my ship, far too tedious to bother with. I really don't want to be a downer, as I've enjoyed the parts of the game not related to the ship quite a bit, but I'm not inclined to deal with the ship combat. Is it something I can largely avoid? Because otherwise I'm probably going to go back to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition for the forseeable future.

From a practicality standpoint, it would probably make their lives less of a living hell when trying to keep it balanced to not have 11 classes that can be mixed nearly without limit. That said, doing it this way is ambitious and I look forward to trying it out. And, of course, I look forward to the fireworks! I can't even begin to imagine how much this game is going to get rebalanced, since changing anything in any class is going to have ripple effects... O.o

Finally settled on a build. Thanks for the input guys Human - Aedyr, Laborer (RP reasons) Darcozzi Paladini Attributes Might = 15 Constitution = 15 Dexterity = 13 Perception = 12 Intelligence = 10 Resolve = 13 Abilities 1: Flames of Devotion 3: Zealous Focus 5: Liberating Exhortation Talents 2: Weapon Focus 4: Vulnerable Attack 6: Inspiring Liberation After level 6, I'll probably look into things like Two-Handed Style, Apprentice Sneak Attack and such things to boost the base damage more. Anyone have some suggestions regarding level 7 and onwards? Besides Sacred Immolation, I mean

Well, I also don't care about having the best possible party of character (sticking with story companions, only having an adventurer until I get a full party of them) and am more interested in making a character that "makes sense" accordoring to their backstory etc. I'm just interested in having a character that isn't laughably bad. If VA doesn't stop being good until the late-game, I might just stick with it and turn it on/off as I need it. Of course, on another note, not having optimized characters does make the game a tad more difficult, which is nice. I don't play enough to give PotD much of a chance, Hard is usually enough for me to balance having fun and a challenge.

I wasn't going to use Jusice, I just mentioned it as another Paladin weapon, since you guys brought it up From how you present it, it seems that VA has diminishing returns as accuracy and item power increases, which makes sense in my experience with it and penetrating shot doing the content available before Cad Nua, which seemed to be a substantial DPS increase at the time. Especially in Raedric's Hold, where there are a lot of armored enemies. I'll stick with VA for the time being, perhaps retrain once I get access to more powerful items. Btw, decided to use the same attributes as Eder. Should make for an interesting playthrough.

On Vulnerable Attack, how come? As far as I can tell/remember, most encounters where DPS matters typically have more than 5 armor as well as decent defenses otherwise, so it seems to me that I'll get full value of the armor penetration when I'm not fighting trash mobs that a party made up of only story companions will dispatch with ease anyway. Armor penetration also seems to be a good boost to graze damage. And unless this speed calculator ( https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ ) is severely out of date, it seems to be about 8-12% attack speed decrease, not 20%. Now, maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but if I am, I'd like to know where and how. St. Rumbalt was a Priest man! but ya its kind of close I don't like low INT on a Paladin in POE because of Sacred Immolation and offensive type buffs like Liberating Exhortation (even if you are not a Darcozzi it is the best Exhoration IMO because ya its not AOE but it lasts WAY longer then the Priest AOE version even with a 10 INT. The priest AOE version even with sky high INT last like 7 seconds). It clears really crappy long lasting debuffs like blind that affect your ACC. Also your auras. Agree with everything Beor said. I love Mabecs Morningstar but its super RNG (its cool for RP its a Paladin weapon in its history) so you would have to get the Rose Salthollow which is meh and only one damage type. For two handed Paladins Great Swords imo are the best option. Two damage types and no RNG for the best weapon. I don't think you need DEX imo but maybe you are going for ALL offense ( would leave it at 10). I just see even a 2handed Paladin as an alpha striker/sturdy front liner. Your WILL be a DPSer with Sacred Immolation but DEX is irrelevant with that ability. You could also make up for attack speed with the plate that has the Frenzy spellbind and durganizing. or cross class a bit and get the lesser Frenzy ability. PS I like your Uther the Lightbringer forum pic! Go Paladins! Other Paladin weapons include Justice (Raedric's sword), which has a unique Crushing Lash enchantment, making it a weapon capable of doing all 3 types of physical damage. I was considering going the real oldschool Uther Lightbringer, as seen in the W2 manual, but decided against it

I'm going to be running a roleplay based Paladin on Hard, which I know isn't that unforgiving, with a 2-handed weapon and was looking for some feedback on the build idea I am going for. The general idea behind this build is not to min/max the character, but still useful to get feedback on general usefulness. Attributes base stats Might = 14 Constitution = 10 Dexterity = 16 Perception = 14 Intelligence = 10 (8?) Resolve = 14 (16?) Justifications: Might - My character is not meant to be the strongest there is, but the +12% damage does get a decent benefit from 2-handed weapons regardless. Dex & Per - Increased attack speed and accuracy, as well as a decent buff to reflex saves. Resolve - I've picked resolve instead of int because it generally works as a charisma stat in this game, not because it is necessarily better than int in any way. First few levels Level 1: Flames of Devotion Level 2: Weapon Focus Level 3: Zealous Focus Level 4: Vulnerable Attack Level 5: Lay on Hands or Sworn Enemy Level 6: Two-Handed Style One of the things that I figured could let me skip on might a bit is the interaction between Dexterity and Vulnerable Attack. VA seems to work better with fast attacks, though I still want to use 2-handed weapons over dual wielding as a personal preference.

I've decided I want to try to make a battlemage-ish character in PoE 1. Base class will be Fighter and I'll pick up the cross-class talents for Wizard, Druid, Cipher and Priest in the course of level 2, 4, 6 and 8 so I get a few actual spells to cast in combat. Does anyone have suggestions as to how I should allocate my attributes and what sort of equipment I should be going for?

I was thinking more in the line of staying with 10 Int. No bonus, no drawback. Until Immolation anyway. Just to have some extra points for other attributes early on. Base stats, of course. I'll probably end up wearing a +2/3 item at some point.