Saori

Wow, great information Kaylon, Boeror! Could you guys give me a party-composition like Kaylon just did but with the NPC-Companions?

Might it not be time to post them now though? 5.0 seems like a patch that wont see much iteration anymore? Hey, thanks for the response! I realise I might have come across a bit demanding/harsh and I apologize for that. Thanks for all the work you do in this forum and all the responses! Yeah, I did not use the search function really well, I will have to look into that!

Just as an addendum it feels really ****ty coming here as a returning/new player and seeing that the buildlist is apparently outdated by 2 years. (on first glance) Considering there are a lot of builds and discussions that are a lot more recent though that leaves a super-wrong first impression. So yeah - defo +1 for an updated Buildlist. If you have time for it obviously.

I am by no means an experienced player - but Fury to me seems underwhelming. Sadly. It is such a cool concept. As Boeroer and others have pointed out already one can build a bit around the whole Lash/Wildstrike thing and stack some Pen to get the OverPen Bonus - considering though that a Fury druids biggest strength are its spells (pen for spells is really good) this feels a bit weird and suboptimal. The Fury druids shapeshifted attacks feel to me like a bonus thing that she has; which is cool - but not something incredible on its own. (I might be wrong Boeroer, but the last time I played the Fury still used a twohanded weapon as her shifter weapon) I think the most apt thing I could find for her is one of the Storm spells which strikes every enemy attacked by the druid (or attacking the druid) with a bolt of lightning. Since the Furys normal attacks hit two times or jump to a second target they get double the milage out of that mechanic while shifted. Sadly though that spell is a PL8 spell - unavailable for multiclassed Fury's. Which is a dang shame because going monk for bonus attack rolls and faster attacks would have been awesome and very thematic. (the fury stoking the, well, fury of the storm etc) Alas: The IMO (mind, I don't know as much about this game as others!) best way to play a druid is going full caster - the healer version of the druid in particular. Spells get multiplicative bonuses to their effect from powerlevel (as opposed to additive affects by might, overpen, crits etc) - so the +2 PL from the healerdruid for healing spells does a lot. And there is a Pike in the game which gives +3 PL to Storm spells. Any non-shifted Druid (shift gets rid of weapon/armor bonuses) with that weapon will generally cast stronger, harder hitting storm spells then any Fury; while still having access to healing spells. (and in case of the healer druid those are boosted too).

+1

Wizard/Monk (and Wizard/Fighter) are still excellent classes and nothing has really changed in regards to this build (it was written after the major nerfs, iirc), so it'll work just fine. While Bloodmage is looking excellent right now, we should wait until the final ptr tuning patch before making any real builds. It might very well change. Monk subclass has always been a playstyle choice. Shattered Pillar is the easiest and least annoying subclass to play. While it's usually weaker than the other two subclasses, it does have amazing synergy with Spirit Lance's aoe damage. They all have their own advantages, so... pick the one you want to play. Thank you!

Hello! Is this Build still viable in 4.0? Would Bloodmage now be the 'go-to' Wizard option? Or is the drawback of the Bloodmage (less defense against bloodied enemies) to much of a drawback? Since Bloodmage provides an easy way to gain wounds is the Helwalker the stronger option over Shattered Pillar? (though with Helwalker we would need to spend action on damaging ourselfs - is that worth it?) Thank you all for your time!

Small update: Concelhauts Draining Touch https://www.instagram.com/p/BT4TCXAlsxj/

Just an update for the forumusers who do not check out joshs tumblr: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTZ5bcdl2CZ/?hl=en

I personally think that from an Art/Design perspective the weapons idle/attack animations are a bigger contributer to any kind of "feel" then the 3D models alone are. Especially if we stay within the artistic/design realm of the PoE 1 weapons. I know this likely will not happen (since It would need some kind of locking animations/engaged system) but I felt Kotor lightsaber fights felt more 'realistic/real' then the pokey-poke style of the Neverwinter Nights games or PoE1. The weight behind strikes and the engagement of the whole body in the swordfight is a big contributer to make fights feel more realistic. - And if there would be movements to be made towards more realism in weapons and combat I would love to see improvements on the animations. That being said, I do not wish for lightsaber-esque weapons in the game. I love the historic influences.

I do not agree with your assement. Neither on the specific weapons (to which I will come shortly) nor that the devs were "out of touch with the player expectations". First of all: There were player expectations towards Soulbound weapons? IIRC PoE was the first game to introduce those types of weapons? What kind of expectations do you talk about that the developers could have possibly been "out of touch with"? I think what you try to express is that the implemented soulbound weapons didn't do what you personally expected soulbound weapons to be. Reading a bit between the lines I think you want them to be the "endgame uber wepaons"? That was never the intent with those weapons, and THAT actually was communicated from the devs. They didnt want to make other endgame weapons obsolete; iirc that was one reason why you could not put a lash on them. The other thing which I found curious is that you appear to be complaining about the weapons falling short in the strength/power department, yet your ranking of the individual weapons seems to be very off for that? Abydons Hammer, while not bad, is not that strong really. His +4 might does sound impressive at first; but in reality its just a potential +2 to might for a character. (since stat boni arent stackable iirc. It might be that the weapon slot is treated differently, then I said nothing. But I think I am correct) And you lock that character into a slow twohander with a subpar passive benefit. (compared to estocs/ or a lash weapon) Stormcaller on the other hand is broken good with bouncing shots and twin arrow. Its proccrate on a decently build hunter is INSANE. It stunlocks entire groups of enemies on its own. In fact THATS the one weapon of the bunch which is WAY to strong. Nvm that it also does split physical/elemental damage. Which is inherently good since the heavier armors tend to be weak to its elemental damage type. Overall I can't help but feel that you complain about failed expectations; those expectations weren't warranted in the first place and on top of it you don't really understand the underlying system to really make a claim about the developer "being out of touch". However it can be argued that Obsidian didnt communicate very clearly 1. about their goals before implementing the Soulbound weapons 2. weapon progression/entchanting system 3. underlying mechanics of combats All of these got acknowledged btw by at least Josh and talked about in greater detail. You can check for JSawyer on twitter and on tumblr as well as the FIG campaign about these things. The campaign videos, especially the streams cover that material quite well.

I think there might be combinations of Cypher/Wizard which could be really really fun. Immediatly to mind come the conjured weapons (especially the multitarget-spiritlance) from Wizards or the Blast talent which could synergize well with Cypher focus generation. Then again Josh mentioned that they will have an eye on 'abuseable' mechanics like that. I think he mentioned Barbarians carnage in that context. On one hand I think it is good that they keep an eye on these things: so as to not devalue other multiclass combinations which have no such 'abuseable' mechanic. On the other hand finding those mechanical quirks and strong combinations is actually a lot of fun. I hope that with 3 subclasses per class and most of them fairly freely multiclassable some combinations will be in the game. I personally would enjoy the possibility to make certain aspects of classes with multiclassing stronger; while sacrificing utility. I.e. the Wizard/Cypher multiclass character I just talked about would be really good as a Melee/Wizard-Cypher. Strong conjured Melee Weapons which get passivly buffed from Cypher abilites. If those two types of abilities combine, this multiclass is strong. The tradeoff would be that you are weaker as a traditional caster. As well as with your Cypher abilities as with your Wizarding ones.