Zoso der Goldene

While it's not strictly true that multiclassing has no real penalties (e.g. not getting access to the paladin near-immortality abilities Providence or Sacred Sacrifice), I agree that Power Level should affect basically everything. No need to avoid stacking, though; these kinds of synergies are at the heart of multi-classing. Just make single-class abilities scale better (maybe even exponentially) at the highest levels.

This. I agree that the idea of DoTing the enemy and hiding is kind of silly. Everyone was freaking out about it, though. Now, those abilities have upfront damage bonuses to boot. So, even though I think backstab takes more work to succeed I think I understand this more. Now DoTs arent breaking stealth, or not as much anyway. You get damage bonuses on all the Actives, plus sneak bonus, plus backstab bonus, and you can DoT and hide. That is a lot of bonus damage even if they shaved some off of backstab. I'd have preferred DoTs kept breaking stealth, and rogues had to chose between stealth and DoTs. However, now everyone is going to ignore all upgrades without DoTs except maybe Confounding Blind, and that is only because CB can cause an enemy's deflection to hit the floor fast when combined with some focus fire. Everyone will get Arterial Strike, Pernicious Cloud, etc use them and stealth away. Before you could chose between burst and sustain damage. Now it might be muddled. I dunno. I see both sides of this, and am of two minds about it. I think it is a damned if you do, but damned if you dont scenario. I think they did this with some of the powerful solo multis in mind, forgetting how much it limits options for players who use a party and/or don't abuse stealth mechanics. I agree that stealth+DoT+stealth+walk away is still a use case for backstab, I just don't think that's how most people play (it's also not terribly fun). Given that so many rogue abilities grant stealth+movement, it seems clear that the developers intended an in-combat stealth build path focused on backstabs. It was barely viable before given the management needed; now it's severely underpowered imo. A backstab should be in devastating blow/soul annihilation territory – if it takes extra management or patience to pull off, it should feel satisfying when it hits. I guess that it can be combined with Soul Annihilation broke its neck. (My guess is the combination was the main reason Rogue/Cipher was the #1 multiclass combination (9% of all multiclassed characters).

Agree with everything. Actually, more than 50% of the people who got Triple Crown eventually got The Ultimate (over 1.000 and counting). And the PotD crowd is much larger than that, off course.

"iroll20s" if you can't handle OP toys being taken away from you. It's not so much the sword being OP, as there being absolutely no reason to take it now. It does half of normal greatsword damage, but attacks twice. Now, it just does half of normal greatsword damage. What's the point in keeping it, again? Did they remove the AoE? If not, then there's your answer. Well for a sword you can get only by making kinda major staff in previous game it's kinda weak. Especially when you need to spend gold for it in this game . I doubt anyone gonna use it now. Well, it's a weapon with quite the AoE if you push Intellect. And unlike the Rod, its damage in the AoE is weapon damage and can therefore be enhanced with effects like soul annihilation. Combine this with Backstab, Sneak Attack, and Soul Annihilation, and a single swing can easily do north of 1.000 pts (or even 1.500 pts) of damage on level 10 (hitting 4-5 enemies, in which case it doesn't attack twice anyway - attacking twice was just for single targets). And that's without Power Surge, Empower etc. I'm keeping it!

it applies flames of devotion twice like dual wielding? that seems really interesting...i guess that is intended...? does it also apply flames of devotion to the AOE hit? hmmmm It applies all kinds of things multiple times (like Soul Annihilation). And the Cone is easily big enough to hit 3 or 4 enemies in one strike (maybe that depends on Intellect?). It can be upgraded to offer a kind of roundhouse strike, but that's an active iirc, so it doesn't work with other active abilities.

Bosses are scaled? Like Dragons? I never noticed. But play TC a lot so so I am not always highlighting the combat log to reference defenses. I forget. I know Thaos is scaled though if you choose. Although I find scaling debatable in PoTD. The AI is already cheating, I have done it on some runs and not on others. PoE 1 scales along the critical path. So the Sky Dragon is scaled up (as it's part of a main story quest), but the Adra Dragon is not.

Confusing does wonders here, using the dragon's minions as shields in a sense. Keep them alive long enough to finish the dragon. BTW Having Steadfast fully evolved helps a lot too (that's true of any Dragon fight, really).

What subclasses on the PC? My Soulblade/Assasin started doing ~130 damage at level 4 with Soul Annihilation on PotD, and no companion got even close to even half total the damage he did from that point on.

I'd have to disagree, as Soul Annihilation is the most powerful Power around, and that works best in a multiclass character (Assassin or maybe Streetfighter or Barbarian).

Are you guys on Steam? Have look here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97411-input-device-mouse-click-doesnt-work-mostly/?p=2010307

Are you guys just reading the first page? Just right click on the game in steam and click on settings. Now click Betas. And here select the Beta Branch. I really hope the patch will go soon out of Beta. So many duplicated bug posts Proofs reading is an arcane art - maybe some should spent a few points in Arcana :

I gotta admit, during my Frozen Crown playthrough not too long ago, I almost got wiped in the Thaos fight as I wen in not thinking to much of it - after all, it's a 12 level challenge for 16th level characters, so it shouldn't be much of a challenge - I figured. Man was I wrong, Aloth was killed permanently (an idea I liked story-wise), and it was close call overall. To be fair, Thaos got assistance from a bug: While Aloth was casting Gaze of the Adragan (he was just buffed enough to do so), Thaos moved to a statue, which left the Spell unfinished, and it could not be cast again ("That ability is already active"). So when I did my Ultimate playthrough, I prepared extremely well for the fight, using much of the tactics outlined above (equipping Aila Braccia, eating whatever I could get my hands on, summons (obvious), moving out of the way, buffing (Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Eldritch Aim), Debuffing (Crushing Doom on Thaos and Ryngrim's Enevervating Terror if I remember correctly. I don't think I used Expose Vulnerabilities. Essentially, Enervating Terror is essential as Weakend it make a crit with Gaze of the Adragan much more likely. If you have a priest with the Painful Interdiction (and Empowered as well to make it more likely to hit), that works just as well.), Gaze of the Adragan, and then a couple of Freezing Rakes. The second Freezing Rake took out Thaos and one of the Statues, the other statue took some more Crushing Doom to finish. I don't think it took 30 seconds to finish. Even if the odds were much worse in the second instanceMy point is that the same fight can feel very different mostly depending on the level of preparation you put into it and the builds involved. So I, too, would be interested to see the builds to help some more. Funny you say that, I almost had my second Frozen Crown ended there for that exact reason. If you prepare for the fight it is not hard if you underestimate it, he can kill your party good. Yeah, there is some truth to the teachings of Concelhaut. Both the one regarding the true foe ("Mortality") and especially the one regarding the deadliest weakness ("Pride").

I gotta admit, during my Frozen Crown playthrough not too long ago, I almost got wiped in the Thaos fight as I wen in not thinking to much of it - after all, it's a 12 level challenge for 16th level characters, so it shouldn't be much of a challenge - I figured. Man was I wrong, Aloth was killed permanently (an idea I liked story-wise), and it was close call overall. To be fair, Thaos got assistance from a bug: While Aloth was casting Gaze of the Adragan (he was just buffed enough to do so), Thaos moved to a statue, which left the Spell unfinished, and it could not be cast again ("That ability is already active"). So when I did my Ultimate playthrough, I prepared extremely well for the fight, using much of the tactics outlined above (equipping Aila Braccia, eating whatever I could get my hands on, summons (obvious), moving out of the way, buffing (Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Eldritch Aim), Debuffing (Crushing Doom on Thaos and Ryngrim's Enevervating Terror if I remember correctly. I don't think I used Expose Vulnerabilities. Essentially, Enervating Terror is essential as Weakend it make a crit with Gaze of the Adragan much more likely. If you have a priest with the Painful Interdiction (and Empowered as well to make it more likely to hit), that works just as well.), Gaze of the Adragan, and then a couple of Freezing Rakes. The second Freezing Rake took out Thaos and one of the Statues, the other statue took some more Crushing Doom to finish. I don't think it took 30 seconds to finish. Even if the odds were much worse in the second instanceMy point is that the same fight can feel very different mostly depending on the level of preparation you put into it and the builds involved. So I, too, would be interested to see the builds to help some more.

Another way is to prone him using Concelhaut's Crushing Doom - I don't remember if he can be petrified (move out range first, summon extras if you have to, buff yourself, and go). Hit both him and his statues if you're lucky or have more than 1 Wizard/Druid in your party, follow up by freezing rakes or the like if you want. If you're still having trouble, make sure you eat all the good stuff beforehand (don't forget Wit Dyr Jerky).

That's true. And e.g. for the ascendant to single-shot full focus at the start of combat, you don't even have to multi-class with assassin, but it helps you repeat the trick during combat ... no wait, it WOULD help you if there was any combat left BTW having enemies use these same builds/tactics as proposed above could lead to actual deadlock, or rather, livelock

See PIRIs post above: It's designed to be skippable, so it's a bug.

</Spoiler> Alright but is it really a spoiler when they ask for a cure in the title of the post? I think the spoilers are for plot more than mechanics. Sure, no big issue here, and the OP is asking for it in a sense. But I wouldn't want to see the solution to any riddles (like the order of the tiles you have to press to go through a door unharmed), and this is somewhat similar.

</Spoiler> Alright but is it really a spoiler when they ask for a cure in the title of the post? I agree that the OP already contains the biggest part of the spoiler (and therefore maybe shouldn't have been posted in a NO SPOILERS forum). It's a minor one to be sure, and not really a story spoiler.

<Spoiler> </Spoiler>

Adragans? I did Ultimate with a Wizard, but it should work just the same with a Rogue: 1) Use summons (deep pockets comes in handy here), 2) Confuse (make sure to hit any non-adragan opponents as well if possible) 3) Deal with them from a distance, repeating 1/2 as required. I didn't use any special protective measures; might be required with a rogue, though. If they're too fast for you, you might want to confuse them first, then summon extras.

You're on Steam, aren't you? Turn of Steam Overlay In-Game (in the Steam Preferences). That should fix it.

American accents are perfectly ok. What's more disturbing is hearing a voice you associate strongly with an entirely different genre (e.g. Fiona from 'Tales from the Borderlands').

Obsidian speed the ball her in my opinion. They introduced camping supplies, but put something like to our three in every dungeon meaning even on PotD you could try maybe five times without returning to town: more than enough. They should have committed to their restriction more, making the only way to get camping supplies to buy them at shops. This people who are willing to travel back to town in order to rest spam are the minority, no matter what they say, and Obsidian would have achieved their goal in most cases. As someone who never rest spammed in PoE I prefer per rest for the resurge management aspect and flexibility it offered. Minority here. When you do a blind TCS or ultimate run, not resting whenever you can is taking an unnecessary risk and asking for disaster. After that, it's not blind anymore, so yeah, am I willing to travel back to town whenever!

The number of per encounter slots is already small per level (usually 2), or do I misunderstand that? So the change would mean to only add per rest slots on top, which would make casters even more powerful. BTW That sounds a lot like Spell Mastery in PoE, but with more flexibility if I understand correctly as you wouldn't have to decide on the exact spell.

"I'm sure PotD is going to be harder to beat after they fix it, but per-encounter spells take most of the blame in my opinion." There's absolutely no reason why PotD can't be balanced with per encounter abilities, when it is actually balanced post release. Per encounter abilities aren't to blame, the fact they did state PotD hasn't been balanced properly yet and even if it was - it'd just be because they still haven't done it properly. Because it's per encounter and we can now multi class or have stronger solo classes, that just then means adding an extra say +3 enemies or 1 level stronger enemy types or increasing numbers that much more, on top of what was already going to be added for PotD balancing. It is not beyond devs ability in this day and age of technology to balance combat just because skills are per encounter. If everyone else can manage it, surely these guys will be able to. Well, per encounter spells make it harder to make PotD challenging but not impossible to beat, at least: To force me to rest, my characters have to be knocked out on a regular basis now. This can go south pretty easily.