SaruNi

From the description, isn't the Devoted iirc supposed to only be able to to be proficient in one melee weapon, and nothing else? So the current "bug" is that the Devoted can currently get multiple weapon proficiencies, and can be proficient in ranged weapons.... No, the problem is that if you want to play a devoted who relies on a summoned weapon, you're forced into choosing staffs, because that's the only summoned weapon available until level 10. Even as a straight fighter, with no subclass, you *only get staff weapon until level 10*. I'd *REALLY* love various types of summoned weapons added to the game with different effects; I'd dearly adore playing a fighter/mage who uses summoned weapons and self-buffs. Wish the Devoted bonus would apply to the Ogre Clubs. They're clubs, after all... and once Might is turned to Strength and decoupled from Magic damage, given the need to split a Devoted/Ogre Transmuter's stats between Strength and Resolve/Intelligence they could use a boost to compensate (especially since Transmuters lose access to Enchantment spells for self-buffs)... also Barbarian/Transmuter could benefit from barbarian bonus to accuracy with proficient weapons. For the Blights, you think there should be a "Proficiency: Tossing Blights" that grants some sort of modal? Maybe "Proficiency: Throwing Stuff"....

Great_Sword_Naga_Coral

Maybe the -25 Will/Fortitude/Reflex for 14 seconds (with max int) modals will be more useful once spellcasting is improved....

On Soul Ignition---it has 0 base penetration, which reduces the damage by 70% against anyone with significant armor (at least, it does about 4 base damage per tick rather than 12). You can cast Body Attunement first to help reach the penetration = AR threshold (tested it just now), but then it's very difficult to be at max focus for SI---unless you've got two ciphers... but Body Attunement is 4th tier so you'd need an extra single-class cipher in the beta. (Also remember that spell damage is most likely going to be moved to Resolve,so the Helwalker bonus won't apply.)

If spell holding weapons return, Black Jacket will be amazing.... Sure you're not underestimating the debuff modals? Ranged debuff (prone, interrupt, -accuracy) -> melee debuff modal so CC will hit -> hit with armor reducing modal so penetration isn't an issue -> switch to damaging weapon. Or switch to weapon with defensive modal and shield if necessary....

If there were a lot of encounters involving at least three different sets of enemies, each one highly resistant to one weapon damage type... then it would be useful. Perhaps also if you want to use disabling weapon modals (maybe with Barbarian's bonus to accuracy for proficient weapons, and berserk / wild sprint for extra speed) to bring down enemy will (Clubs), reflex (Flail), Fortitude (Morningstar), Accuracy (Wand), and/or armor (Mace) before CC (Berserker Yawp or Paladin Blind against Will, Into the Fray against Reflex or Mule Kick against Fortitude, not to mention all the caster spells that target will/reflex/fortitude without the huge accuracy bonuses that weapons get).... Modal debuffs last for a base of 10 seconds, and you're much more likely to hit with them than with spell debuffs currently. So once you hit an opponent, unless you move onto another opponent, there's no reason not to switch weapons (if you don't get a significant penalty to recovery for doing so).... Hopefully other weapons bring even better modals too.

From the description, isn't the Devoted iirc supposed to only be able to to be proficient in one melee weapon, and nothing else? So the current "bug" is that the Devoted can currently get multiple weapon proficiencies, and can be proficient in ranged weapons....

If they'd gone with the initial, brief description---without the 5 second schtick---it would be pretty good. Were they adamant about forcing people to actually use the powers? Afraid people would multiclass Ascendant just for Biting Whip? Did they really think the 6 second spells would be too powerful?

I find it easier to just kill off the starting companions and then using the mod in this thread, use the 1,000,000 gold to just recruit companions made to your specifications and then outfit them from the expanded store in the mod and then use' add experience to level x' and bring them up to match your main. With enemy scaling set you can even crank everyone up to level nine and see how the higher level abilities work. Yes, but there's a limit on the number of adventurers you can hire (8 maybe?) and sometimes it's just more convenient to go with the initial mercenaries. Also easier to keep track of different saves since the name you give each save doesn't show up on the menu to load them. I think half of my 64 hours so far have been in character creation and leveling....

As a tier 3 Might Affliction, Stunned should be downgraded to tier 2 by the passive that grants resistance to Might afflictions... and cancel out with the Tenacious Inspiration from Champion's Boon, which must be at least tier 2 (Champion's Boon does have to be cast first because Withdraw makes the character untargetable). Yet on testing this did not prevent/cancel the "cannot move or take any action" from Withdraw, even though the tooltip for Withdraw implies that "cannot take any action" comes only from the Stunned affliction... haven't tried Beetle's Shell yet.

One issue with the highest-level Ranger abilities in the current beta is that you only get to pick one 5th tier ability. And they look like some of the best and most interesting.

Just figured out how to add abilities and attributes to the Mercenary companions we start out with. Refer to the mercenary companions as: Companion_Generic_Priest Companion_Generic_Rogue Companion_Generic_Fighter Companion_Generic_Wizard The full name is actually Companion_Generic_Priest(Clone) but the UI will interpret it as that for you. The full commands are (except as noted) the same as PoE 1, AddAbility Companion_Generic_Priest Ability_Name and so on.

Beetle's Shell used to be terrible because the huge deflection penalty from Stunned led to critical hits destroying the shell very quickly... it might be better if it didn't involve Stunned at all. Though since Stunned is a Might Affliction... can the "no action" part of Beetle's Shell and Withdraw can be gotten rid of with a third tier Might inspiration? From the tooltip Withdraw's "cannot take any action" effect only comes from Stunned, but from a quick test just now neither Berserker Frenzy nor Suppress Affliction get rid of it.

Playing single class characters means that you gain abilities several levels later than single class characters. It's hard to appreciate until you play, but this is a really annoying downside. If you enjoy the Ranger ability tree, you'll feel bad multi-classing. Although I really like the ability tree, some people currently find the current ranger ability tree a little lackluster. If you do as well, play mutliclass. The Ranger abilities tree has a lot of stuff like evasive roll, concussive shot & takedown, which are more oriented towards battlefield control than pure damage dealing. If you don't care for that, and want to rain as much damage as you can from afar, definitely play multi-class. The ranger does have more abilities to use in PoE2, and I find it's a very flexible class which rewards clever micromanagement. However, if you value flexibility, definitely play multi-class. Haven't tried a single-class Ranger yet but the 5th tier abilities (single-class only in the beta unless you add them with the console) look pretty good, especially: Binding Roots - 0.5 casting time Immobilize + Dexterity affliction... all the caster disables have long casting times Upgraded Evasive Roll - AoE ranged attack Driving Flight - ranged attacks can also hit second enemy behind initial target Master's Call and upgraded Heal Companion also seem pretty good (one gives the pet +5 dex and 100% stride as well as teleporting them to the ranger, the other gives the pet +5 con and more importantly +4 AR in addition to DoT healing).

Though if they increase the self-damage from the scepter modal it might actually be more useful for a ranged streetfighter or berserker (or death godlike, or all three)....

The screenshot shows the Mataru Warrior has a Perception Inspiration, right? (See the upper lefthand corner for active effects.) Could that be what's suppressing the Blindness?

Summons are useful just because another warm body on the field diverting damage from your other characters is always very useful. The figurines in PoE1 were very useful, and were essential for POTD just for this reason. Sure, and you could get enemies to waste spells and per-encounter abilities on them. Once spells are improved maybe it will be better, particularly if you have your Druid do more than just summon, buff, and heal. But Beckoner is so much better for this (even most vanilla Chanter summons bring multiple creatures at once). Conjuror once it's fixed will have 3 tentacles at once. And if the Figurines are anywhere near as common as in PoE 1, the relative usefulness of random Druid summons will suffer even more. Plus iirc the tanky Earth Blight is slow-moving. Several of the blights have a nice "do damage when hit" ability, but when enemy AI is implemented they'll probably refuse to attack the blights and go straight for squishies.... And the long casting time means that even if your Druid isn't focused around being a Summoner, a large part of combat will be spent casting the summons (and hoping you don't get interrupted)....

Interesting. They also say that they don't want to decrease summons cast times too much because they're extremely powerful. Aside from Chanters the only summoning spells that work right now (not counting the crappy familiar) are Druid summons... are they really anywhere near OP right now? What you get is random, and even the 5th level version doesn't seem extremely powerful, especially since you can only have one summons per character at a time. Plus the different summons seem suited to different roles---the Earth Blight is tanky, the Fire Blight is elemental damage oriented---so you can't plan your party build around getting a specific one. Beetle's Shell can make any blight sort of tanky (for 10 seconds), but the Stunned status reduces defenses by so much that the target ends up getting critted heavily and losing the 200 damage shield in less than 10 seconds. If you want to buff your Lesser Blight using Woodskin or your Blight with Form of the Delemgan, then you lose the ability to summon a second one, because Lesser Blight and Woodskin are both 2nd level, and Blight and FotD are both 4th level. And to get the full Blights in the beta you have to go single-class druid. While I didn't play with it for very long, summons-focused Druid seemed extremely underwhelming (especially since it can't be used with Lifegiver, and doesn't go well with Fury). They'd be great against specific enemies if you could choose what type of Blight you get, but with a 1 in 5 (or is it less than that? Sand, Earth, Storm, Ice, Fire...) chance of getting a good one (and an equal chance of getting one that's extra vulnerable to that specific enemy), it doesn't seem practical. If anything they should either buff the Druid summons to make them worth the gamble, let us choose which we summon (maybe first we summon an indeterminate blight, then it has a once per-encounter instant cast ability that turns it into the blight of our choosing), or move the buffing spell levels so they don't conflict with the summoning spell levels.

You can solve the multiclassing issue by making the bonuses scale strongly with power level (or you could just nerf it for multiclass characters but not single class).

Pain Link is supposed to do raw damage to enemies when they hit the target ally. Based on the combat logs and enemy health, it does nothing. Tested on not just spells and special abilities but also on ranged and melee hits.

Ghost Heart seems perfect for both Pain Link and Ectopsyhic echo. The description of pain link doesn't even say how long it lasts or anything really, so who knows, lol. Got 13.2 seconds with what should be +5% from int and +5 from power level, so probably 12 seconds base. It doesn't seem to do anything, though, judging by the logs and enemy health. (Not even for melee basic attacks....) If it were working, though, you could use the Boar pet because it regenerates health....

(Though being able to keep your pet buffed/alive with Cipher abilities does help avoid Bonded Grief... and the Ranger's pet heal and defense bonuses help keep the Cipher's buffed target ally alive.)

Yeah the Lion is fast. Using the "target ally" spells on your pet seems fun from a RP standpoint at least, though aside from RP I don't think there's any benefit to having the pet be the Cipher's... except it makes Ranger less boring (when you feel like it) and Sharpshooter helps the Cipher with weapon accuracy and penetration. Between the Cipher penetration bonus and the Sharpshooter penetration bonus you'll have good penetration. Ranger's Evasive Roll gives a nice +15% speed boost for Cipher spells (from +5 dexterity), and Takedown makes enemies easier to hit.

Eleven if you count letting the Titan hit you first to trigger Heating Up. Ranged Streetfighter with Powder Burns (to become "flanked") is pretty good (at least multi-classed). Don't see the Sickened Affliction being applied, so not a Bleak Walker though? (Walking the... bleak streets.)

Ciphers who actually use their abilities already need high Perception (especially since Tactical Meld doesn't even grant accuracy now according to the logs), Dexterity (because Tactical Meld and Pain Block are the only ones with short casting time), and Might... making them split points between Might and Resolve is too much. Perhaps Ciphers could also be buffed by making Tactical Meld lower-level (maybe just 4, if they really want to avoid having people in the beta multi-class Cipher just for the +accuracy... or maybe have a weaker quick-cast version of Tactical Meld at level 1 or 2) and having it give a bonus to focus generation to make up for the cost. Then single-class Ciphers wouldn't have to max perception to use their offensive powers effectively (if only against the target that the ally is attacking, which is a significant limitation, especially since the easiest way to build focus is usually to attack the weakest enemy...). And/or a fast-cast speed buff to reduce the need for Dexterity. If the developers are really worried about multi-class Cipher being too powerful they could make it not stack with other speed buffs (Nimble Inspiration)....