angryusaman

Thanks for the helpful replies, guys. It's great that they removed suppression since it takes away one of the more tedious aspects of selecting gear for your characters. Now, I only still want to know about inspirations stacking or not and weapon modals stacking. What do these things stack/not stack with?

In Pillars 1, I played a max PER Barbarian focused on interrupting enemies. It was the first build I played that game with and was very successful. I'm not even sure if PER still affects interrupt rating or even how interrupts work in PoE2 but it was great in the first game. The specifics can be found in the Pillars 1 forum in the thread "The Obsidian Boards' character builds" (it's pinned to the top of the forum). Look for the interrupt Barbarian build there if you're curious.

Well, the reason why I picked a single class over a multi-class is this: I want to get access to my most powerful abilities as early in the game as possible. Builds which are great only at or near max level don't have the same draw for me as builds that are as powerful in the beginning and middle as in the end of the game.

Noob question: How do I get unlimited empower points on my chanter? I'm playing a beckoner at almost level 8 for my first playthrough. This sounds amazing.

The thing I like about wizards/druids/priests in this game is that every one of their spells can be used in every fight without ever resting once. The only need to rest comes from using empower. It feels like every formerly Vancian caster has 2 spell mastery spells of each level now. In the first game I would never use the per rest spells or abilities unless I was fighting one of the hardest boss fights in the game or something equally challenging that would require me to burn resources. I would use the absolute crap out of the per encounter spells and abilities though, and that goes for caster and non-caster. I like how almost everything is per encounter now.

Does an item with +1 int stack with an item that has +2 int for a total bonus of +3 int for example? What about inspirations? Do they stack? How about weapon proficiency modals? What among these things do and don't stack with each other type? Is suppression still around in PoE2 or will all items' effects stack with each other?

I usually suffer from the reroll ad nauseum effect described here, but for some reason, since I created my first character, I haven't restarted yet. I'm almost level 8 now with my Chanter (beckoner subclass) and it feels very solid. Usually by the time my summons are about to die or time out I have enough phrases chanted to summon them again while they're still up. Having 4 Ogres up at once really does the trick.

I may be one of the few here, but I actually like the new system better than the first game's. My playstyle in PoE1 went something like this: Avoid taking companions or training adventurers of the Vancian caster type (Priest, Wizard, and Druid) since their spells are all "per rest." Use as many classes as possible with per encounter abilities or casters like Chanter and Cipher who can freely use all their spells each fight without worrying about using up my precious camping supplies. Only use camping supplies when I find a new set of camping supplies and can't loot them because my current stock is full. Okay, I did end up using a priest for pretty much every playthrough. So, I only used Radiance and Interdiction in every fight and then only cast a per rest spell when it was absolutely necessary. I felt forced to take the priest with me because without his buffs and debuffs, certain fights became a pain. For all the 90% or more fights that a priest wasn't really needed, and before spell mastery, he felt like dead weight. Once I got spell mastery, I'd use those in every fight too and that made the character feel more useful. Now every caster's spells behave as if they had that spell mastery for each one except they get two casts instead of just one. Guess what? My casters cast every fight now without worrying about camping supplies and I like this. Right now I feel like every caster has a place in my party because I don't have to worry about camping supplies and resting to restore spell uses. If they had kept the old system for casters, again, I wouldn't be using them except where I felt they were absolutely necessary. I'm really shocked at how good the new system feels right at launch. Can some things be tweaked and improved? Absolutely. I expect that Obsidian will continue to change the game for the better in the future like they did with the first game, but overall, I'm really happy with the game the way it is now.