SaruNi

Maybe in the very early levels. But by level 6 (where the beta starts) Wizards have great defense against weapon attacks---not so much from switching spell damage to resolve (which increases deflection), but from fast cast spells like Arcane Veil (+50 deflection for a long time), Wizard's Double (+40), Mirrored Image (+30)... and most attacks can't interrupt casting. There's also a 4th level teleport spell that stuns enemies in its path. And Deleterious Alacrity of Motion makes Wizards immune to engagement. OTOH, a Wizard/Druid using spiritshift for melee damage is going to need Strength. Spell accuracy is very low against most enemies, and most spells have long casting times, so Dexterity and Perception are very important. Any spells with AoE or duration need Intelligence. So if you want to do good spell damage *and* good melee damage, you may have to dump Constitution... making your character much less survivable, even with the Bear's armor or the Stag's defensive bonus. Whereas a pure caster Wizard can dump Strength and max Resolve.

Hey. Would the Mage Slayer be a good subclass for a pure Barbarian? Does it half the duration of Frenzy? Or are there new Barbarian abilities that it would affect? Cheers It does halve the duration of Frenzy (and Wild Sprint, and I'd guess the +3 engagement from upgraded Yell). But barbarian CC abilities (on enemies) aren't diminished. However at least one person wrote they played through the beta with it and found it to be powerful. (Did anyone ever figure out exactly which abilities the mage slayer "chance of spell failing" effect applies to?)

Turns out shields were---and still are---used with pistols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield#Modern_history

Ah, turns out there *are* potions that grant resistance to afflictions: Potion of the Resililent Body---Strength / Constitution / Dexterity Potion of the Resilient Spirit---Int/Res/Per Potions seem due for a nerfing though. They're generally much better than class abilities even without high alchemy---and when you add in scaling from alchemy they seem probably OP.

You're right about potions as far as I can tell for my brief trip back to Vektor's shop and since drugs are affected by the same skill, I suspect you're right about them as well. I'm not sure how it'll work for scrolls in the end - they don't seem to differ all that much from the spells they're based on from what I've seen, and I remember reading somewhere that they weren't actually scaling based on Arcana, but they could exclude inspiration spells from having scroll equivalents. Potions and drugs could still cover for tier 1 afflictions somewhat by offsetting their penalties without eliminating the afflictions themselves, but by tier 2 that won't really cut it, I agree. If it turns out that there are no scrolls that dole out inspirations then that drastically cuts down on the options available to step in for those talents. Pillars 1 had a bunch of "Prayer Against _" type scrolls though, so we might see something similar for Deadfire. Sure. I said as much twice in my last post. My point still isn't that resistance talents are useless or redundant. There are obvious advantages to having them, but the same way that having them can free up slots and resources, not having them and depending on less effective but still useful options may be desirable as a way to free up points for other abilities that players may want more. If an ability is frequently passed over for other choices, that suggests to me, again, that it's not a top-tier ability. From a quick glance at the scrolls (using findgamedata), there is no scroll of suppress affliction, but there are a few scrolls that grant inspirations: Scroll of Blessing (Insightful, 1.6 second cast, 3 second recovery) Scroll of Prayer for the Body (Fit, 1.6s cast, 2s recovery) Scroll of Prayer for the Spirit (Smart, 1.6s cast, 2s recovery) That leaves 3 affliction types undefended. And the scrolls still have significant cast/recovery times. findgamedata does have references to other scrolls that currently seem inaccessible and higher level---Garden of Life, Weal and Woe. However it seems likely that all (or at least most) of the intended scrolls up to 5th level are already there. What I meant to add or clarify wrt equippables is that because the resistances (or probable immunities) are high-tier, the corresponding equippables will likely be also high-tier, meaning we'll have to sacrifice very powerful alternative equippables. Even if you don't consider resistance/immunity top tier, the equippables will probably treat those abilities as if they were top tier. But sure if you can get "good enough" without using any equippables at all that might be preferable. We'll have to see once there are more items like that.

It seemed like potions and drugs specifically avoided granting inspirations or resistance to afflictions (or are there some that do?). In the final game it does seem likely that there will be many equippable items for resistances or bonus defense, but at the cost of other significant bonuses. Single-class fighter or paladin with the passives will have a much easier time getting resistance to all the tier three afflictions. (Resistance obviously has the benefit of not having to worry about your "suppress affliction / inspiration" caster getting CC'd and being unable to cast. Again with exception of Charmed....) It seems extremely likely that the corresponding highest-tier passives will include stronger resistance (or at least prevent Charmed) and eventually immunity. [Edit: Resistance / immunity also has the advantage of not being vulnerable to Arcane Dampener or its equivalent.]

You don't think the high-level passives are powerful? Driving Flight, Interrupting Blows, Deep Wounds / Adept Evasion / Persistent Distraction, upgraded Fighter stance that causes prone when enemies try to disengage, Paladin passive that removes confused/charmed/dominated from all o party for successful unarmed attack... resistances that not only prevent Stunned / Paralyzed / Dominated (though Dominated gets downgraded to Charmed, which is still bad...) through downgrading, but also completely nullify tier 1 afflictions. With limited selection and limited use of spells/abilities it doesn't seem so easy to expect to counter all afflictions with inspirations, though I haven't tried yet... is that your in-game experience? (Sure, multiclass characters will eventually get the tier 5 passives, but there are probably even more powerful higher-tier passives that they won't get.)

If enemy AI is programmed similarly for PoE 2..... What about an Evoker or Priest of Magran Flame Shield retaliation tank with Paladin/chanter support? With St Elga---minimal health, no armor spellcaster... Death Godlike +3 power level bonus... can't die and gets +5 resolve from upgraded LoH (Courageous inspiration). With Darcozzini---minor flame shield and flame shield should stack. Chanter for the Concentration chant, if you want to cast spells other than the initial Flame Shield. Of course if AI is changed to avoid retaliation and unkillable characters this won't work (though that would be good in a different way if it causes enemies to not attack casters).

Thanks, that works in combat. Though outside of combat it gives a red circle with a line through it when trying to target party members (and other allies too I'd assume).

20 Alchemy Potion of Relentless Striking: +60% damage -41% recovery = +70% action speed

For regular weapon attacks, you hover the cursor over an enemy and the cursor changes to a sword, and you click to attack. However, when your cursor hovers over an ally, it changes to the "select" tool, and clicking makes you select the ally instead of attacking. In PoE 1 you could click on the weapon to get the attack cursor, but that's not working---you just get the ordinary cursor which changes to a select cursor over allies. [Edit: clicking on the sword icon in the left-center panel does work for attacking allies in combat, but outside of combat the cursor changes into a red circle with a line through it when trying to target an ally.]

? Sure you can target allies with regular weapon attacks and also hostile spells. Hmm, from testing it just now you can target allies with hostile abilities / spells, but how do you target them with regular weapon attacks? Instead of the weapon cursor you get the "select" cursor... and clicking on the weapon first doesn't help. So probably an unintended UI issue....

Nah I don't think so, aren't the blunderbuss modal useless except for streetfighters now? It's more a debuff than bonus... Also gives your 3 (or 2) strength casters a way to do damage once all their spells (or scrolls, or spell-binding uses, or grenades) are gone. Berserk + Phantom Foes should also work with Streetfighter (without the perception malus) though I haven't tested that yet. (And berserk lets your carnage and jump spells hit charmed/dominated enemies, who can't be targeted by regular weapon attacks or hostile spells.) Another nice thing about Powder Burns is that a regular blunderbuss attack follows immediately after with no reloading (though with 3 strength that might not be helpful except with something like Combusting Wounds).

The Devoted penetration bonus does stack with Sharpshooter for +4 penetration, so that's pretty good. If you can get the Tenacious inspiration that will be +6 penetration. Empower can also boost penetration. Black Jacket has a huge initial speed boost because you can quick switch four times without any reload or recovery time. Dual wielding firearms is currently bugged but once it's working again it should allow you to fire 8 times at the start of the fight. Black Jacket's main drawback is no Constant Recovery but that's not as useful for a ranged character anyway. Fights often don't last very long so I'd expect Black Jacket to have higher firearm DPS than Devoted in most cases. You'll want a Chanter in the party for the chant that speeds up reload speed. If in the future everything that speeds up recovery will speed up reload speed too then Berserker might become good (bonus accuracy, Tenacious, +60% action speed with Frenzy + Wild Sprint + Bloodlust, reload speed instantly refunded if you kill the target with Barbaric Blow).

After further testing, Powder Burns actually doesn't build focus. (The blunderbuss does an ordinary attack right after powder burns which is what threw me off. Changed strength to 0 and resolve to 1000 to test.) Plus it doesn't get bonus damage from Exceptional, etc. So strength is necessary to build focus, unless you're a Beguiler....

With 20 Resolve that's 30% damage that should stack multiplicatively with other bonuses (like Lightning Strikes, Assassinate...). So 10 resolve assassinate = x2 damage, 20 resolve assassinate (for example with Ectopsychic Echo from smoke veil) = x2.6 damage....

Don't forget Per (at least until they finally get Tactical Meld working...). You can use blunderbuss's powder burns AoE modal to gain focus scaling with Res instead of Str (but then you have to deal with being Distracted...). Ectopsychic Echo doesn't scale with Int, so you could try a low Int build if you're willing to give up all the powers with duration or AoE. Can be cast outside of combat with focus fully restored too. Alternately you can forego Resolve in favor of charm/domination or CC. If Beguiler were working you could get focus without needing weapon damage at all. An obvious way to counter the new demands on Cipher stats would be to make Valorous Echoes and Ectopsychic Shield 0.5 second casting time....

Shieldbearers are great if you want to make use of the can't-die effect from their LoH. While it's almost certainly better to use LoH with a second character optimized for low-health bonuses etc, it's fun to have a Shieldbearer using it on themselves now the malus has been removed. (Granted, between the recovery time and the zeal cost, a LoH immortality build is bad for sustained DPS, though with high int and dex you can still get swings in between LoH. And Death Godlike Shieldbearer with scrolls has good burst DPS near death....)

So that basically leaves... Disintegrate, Mind Blades, and Soul Shock, and that (usually underwhelming) lance power? But in PoE 2 casting time is too long to spam lower tier abilities, and focus gain is too slow to rely on multiple Disintegrates..... The malus from Powder Burns also has a fixed 10 second duration, so 3 int won't undo that... Edit: after more testing it turns out Powder Burns doesn't build focus.

Ectopsychic Echo's tooltip indicates it has a fixed duration, not affected by intellect or other bonuses/maluses. While this could be intentional, it doesn't make much sense in context... unless the goal was to nerf ciphers.

What about Skalds? "Skalds are the new Ciphers?" Tempted to suggest Assassin/Cipher casting Mental Binding before combat starts... but with 2 second recovery that still only gives you base 4 seconds before cc ends. With 20 int that should be 5 seconds though... and Lingering Echoes adds another 10% for 5.6 seconds... with max dex that might be barely enough to get weapon attacks in between casts. But then focus gain is so slow....

Actually outside of a small number of builds using either Badgradr's Barricade or Dragon's Maw the enchantment didn't just lag behind, it caused the character in question to do worse damage than they would have done using a non-bashing shield. As for shields in general I'd agree that they're not where they should be. There's a reason that until the advent of full plate armour almost everyone who was expecting to fight in melee (and many who weren't) would armed themselves either with a shield or with a polearm, and dual wielding was incredibly rare. Yet going by PoE's mechanics you'd expect everyone to do the opposite. Well even with full plate armor if I remember correctly the small shield - the buckler - remained in use for quite some time. And only amateurs would use shields only defensively in combat if not fighting in group formation. You can knock your oponent to the ground, bash its body, have spikes on it or sharpen the shields metal edge in some parts. I even heard somewhere about hooks used on shields against other shields...I don't think this last one was true though. All in all plenty of opportunities are there to attack with a shield. A shield with spikes would be cool. Either for retaliation or attacking with it....

If you want to use more Ranger abilities and fewer Paladin abilities, you can substitute Sworn Enemy. There's also Branded Enemy (bugged though when last I checked). And Gilded Enmity.... But the tooltips should (eventually) contain notices or explanations about when abilities will or won't stack, especially for cases like this (or Goldpact Bear vs. Goldpact Berserker). Or maybe it's enough to explain that "abilities from similar types (active abilities being one) won't stack, except when noted"... at least having the option of turning on reminders about stacking might be useful, if the list doesn't get exceedingly long (does not stack with: list of all abilities it could stack with... could go on for a while).

Because Tactical Meld can be cast outside of combat and has a 30 second base duration, you can cast it and have the focus returned to you before combat starts. Not only do you get all the focus back almost immediately... there's a bug that actually gives you between +20 and +40 extra focus at the start of combat if you do this. So 62 starting focus became alternately 95, 85, and 93. That almost makes up for the accuracy bonus (main point of Tactical Meld) not working at all... let them fix that first though. Hopefully we'll still be able to cast it outside of combat (like the 5th tier Wizard protective self-buff). You can also cast Ectopsychic Echo before combat starts (won't initiate combat unless enemy is attacked by it) and get the focus refunded, though the 10 second duration makes this slightly less useful if you also want to start casting a 6 second spell before combat starts. Dominate would be much more fun and versatile if you could actually control their ability use (and make them fireball themselves, etc.). You can make them move or attack a particular enemy, but using abilities---the main advantage of dominate over charmed---is left up to their AI. Maybe they just haven't implemented it yet?....

But the lashes from lightning strike and iirc eternal devotion are just percentages of DPS. You might get a bit longer effective use of them from having less chance of mismatch between recovery and attack, but I think that mismatch is at most equal to recovery time + attack speed (worst case scenario being it expires just before your next attack, instead of just after).