Hynkel

I'm not very thrilled by the idea of having romance in PoE, to say the least. In video games, especially RPGs like PoE, everything works around the obtacle/reward dynamic. Thus "seducing" a companion tend to look a lot like going to the grocery store where you can get immediatly what you want for the right investment. This is awkward at best and often plain wrong (see the aformentioned prostitute thing). One of the reasons I play those difficult niche games is because I don't want to waste any more hours of my life playing those hollow power-fantasies AAA games. Difficulty and learning are fun ; having the entire world designed to indulge your every whim is not once you're a grown-up. Also, about designing a character made to please the male audience : no. Just no.

True. Animancers have no special psionic powers though. What I do find confusing is the distinction between necromancers and animancers. After all, skeletons and golems share the same creature type.

Regarding animancers, Galvino is a cipher, but Caedman Azo and the mind-controled animancer from WM2 are wizards. I think it's a shame that animancers don't get their own class, they could be a lot of fun !

I have another question about something that's confusing me: Most guides for Melee Wizards say that Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff & Citzal's Spirit Lance are the go-to enchanted weapons to use in the big/hard fights. Then, also, most guides I saw recommend to skill "Weapon & Shield Style" for the very good deflection bonus..but when I equip the summoned weapon, won't I lose this bonus? The enchanted weapon is a two-handed, right? I don't understand..why would I skill Weapon & Shield if I don't make use of it in half of the fights (whenever I used summoned weapons) If what you want is waiting for your main tanks to get engaged, and then attack from behind with reach/summoned weapon, then you can do without sword & shield style, just get ready to cast arcane veil every single time things go wrong and the main tanks get overruned. If you want to do some actual tanking though, sword & shield style is one of the best defensive stat buff you can get. Parasitic staff and spirit lance are great damage dealers but they won't make you survive 3 vs 1 situations. A front row wizard needs to do some crowd control first, with fan of flames spam or stuff like confusion or sleep ; then he can summon a weapon once ennemies stop targeting him.

Also another thing I think is worth pointing out : correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a player like Boeroer with a lot of gameplay experience and knowledge will have a plan for everything, making stuff like paladin raise, healing and charm resistance comparably less useful (especially since you can always use the right scroll or priest spell when you know what's coming).

Well, I did play Pallegina on PoTD and ended up using the re roll feature to remove everything dps-related except the +10 acc to companions. The thing is, this DPS build is such a huge commitment, and you can't half-ass it or it will end up like crap. Since I played MC rogue + priest buffs + sagani for flanking pet/DPS thanks to drawn in spring, a tank was much more useful to me than another single-target dps. I especially don't like how this build relies on a couple of per encounter things you'd have to sit on until the mobs are wiped out somehow (at the cost of cool tanky things like righteous mind) ; though this probably shouldn't be an issue in a team with a lot of mass dps (something like barb+druid+dragon thrashed). So it all comes down to team composition I guess.

Pallegina's dps is underwhelming, that's why people tend to prefer Kana over her. Paladins need high might to do any damage and she doesn't have that. Plus you're stuck with flames of devotions, which is very good on a more dps-oriented paladin but feels like a waste on her. That being said, if you're looking for a living wall she's amazing. Eder+Pallegina with the DR aura are extremely hard to kill ever on PoTD.

I'm talking about the dragons' unique attack, that one thing that can utterly destroy your entire party. How does it work ? Is there some kind of hidden cooldown between two dragon breaths, or is it completely random ? Does it have something like a per encounter limit ?

I'm really excited by the new multiclass feature. This could allow for a lot of creativity if done right. But that's also why I'll probably try a brand new character. For the 2-games-long adventure, I'll simply wait for the ccommunity to mod the deadfire engine into PoE

You have 4 spells per level and rest, so that's 4 encounters if you don't use 2 spells of the same level. My favorite thing was to summon the level 5 magical pike with barbarian AoE, and then Citzal martial power which is level 6 (if you played DnD, it's the Venser transformation knockoff). Totally wrecks havoc. Plus, you have the per encounter book energy thingies you get at level 1 AND you get per encounter spells at high level AND you can rely on companions for the most trivial battles. The one thing that's very limited though is the spell like ability who gives you instant deflection, (2/rest), you have to use it as an emergency button.

Actually melee-oriented wizars are pretty good, probably better than fireball machineguns in a lot a situations. They can easily buff themselves for sky-high deflection. The one thing you have to decide is whether you want a tank always in the front row or something like an offtank, who takes more time to buff himself but is more DPS-oriented. The hard part is that I find melee wizards extremely MAD (multiple-attribute dependants). Imho you absolutely can't drop Int because it affects buff duration, so the rest depends of what you're planning to do.

Thanks ! One thing I hope deadfire will do better than PoE is documenting hidden attributes. There are tons of things whose effects are very hard to quantify unless you do a s***load of testing and go very deep into the game system. Tyranny did show attack speed in the equipment menu, I think that's a good start !

- What are you ? - Me ? I'm the head of Vecna ! Thanks for the hard work !

So I just beat POTD with my melee rogue using boots of speed to reach for isolated ranged enemies. She had a lot of great synergies with Itumaak, especially for flanking. I felt like Sagani's pet also had some kind of movespeed bonuses. So here's my question : am I imagining things ? Or is this something specific to Itumaak and/or some others companions ? I haven't seen this documented anywhere.

In PoE there are several shields with the "bash" ability, allowing you to smack enemies with it as if you were dual wielding. Well, I'm no PoE system guru, but for my understanding of things, dual wielding gives you 50% more attacks and not 100%, which means you'll attack with your main weapon about 33% less often (you go from startup->hit->recovery, to startup->wpn hit->startup2->shield hit) If that's what really happens, it doesn't seem very thrilling to trade attacks with your main weapon for crappy shield damage. Can someone with a better understanding of the game system give a better insight ?

When starting a new playthrough, I like trying new strategies and classes. Differents classes fit different roles, but the one class I always end up playing is priest. I feel like this class has no substitute and you're kinda stuck with it if you want a balanced group. What do you think ?

I think there are only 2 things that really matters for a goop trap disarmer : - Having a decent level of stealth (stealth bonus items might help) ; - Being able to spend most of her points in mechanics. The issue with Barbarian is that you either wanna max out athletics to make Second Wind relevant for the bazillion HP you have, or spend points in Lore for scrolls. So it's probably best to pick someone who don't care about either, namely Aloth or Durance.

Hello, I beat the game a couple of times on hard and now I'm about halfway through the game on POTD. This is actually my second attempt ; on my first run (with a Wiz), I played all the way to the swamp dragons fight, got my ass kicked 5 or 6 times, then moved on to other life priorities and stopped playing the game for about a year. Anyway, I'm about halfway through the game and my party looks like this : Front : Eder, Pal Mid : Dual-wielding Rogue MC Back : Aloth, Custom Priest So there's room for one more character. I'd like to avoid playing more custom adventurers if possible. The big issue here is that my Rogue is really glass canon-like, she does 3 times the damage Eder does but once she kicks the bucket I lack a plan B to cut through that dragon thick skin. I tried Maneha with a pike, and she's amazing at killing Xaurips but against dragons I don't feel like that's gonna help me at all. Maybe try Zahua instead of Pallegina ? I have zero experience with monks so I don't know how viable they are for DPS. Eder and Pallegina are very good at not dying, which helps me a lot to sneak around with my Rogue so idk. Sagani could be an interesting option if I had any idea how to build her right. Is gun-wielding Sagani a thing ? Should I give up on upgrading the pet entirely ?