cheesevillain

I think he's always meant to be one, actually, as a counterpart to Berath. They both look after the cycle of life and death, so both are gods of life and death, after a fashion. Also, according to the Guidebook Gaun goes around "reaping" people he thinks have lived long enough. Perhaps because he's also a Old Testament style destructive and judgmental god who led his most devoted worshippers into a gruelling war that broke two nations. He can be described as benevolent, but he's not a not just a straightforward lawful good god of righteousness and good feels. Btw, Eothasian priests can suppress afflictions by applying inspirations. The priest classes are so different from the others in customization and playability that I can only think they're unfinished. And the devs are probably getting the message, because I haven't seen a single positive statement about the priest class anywhere on these forums yet.

They're both very expensive, but without unique animations for spells, they can't include wizards in the game.

Helwalker/Wizard. With Dance of Death, you can easily get a large boost to your accuracy, & +10 might. With Duality of Mortal Presence, you also get +10 intelligence. There's another wound-based ability which gives another +5 strength. The monk has an ability called "Lightning Strikes". Currently it adds +50% damage not only to weapon damage, but also to spell damage, which can be gruesome. And lightning strikes also increases action speed significantly, helping you cast those slow-cooking spells. Either Torment's Reach or Force of Anguish can also be used to keep the enemies away from your incredibly delicate squishy.

If you guys haven't seen elsewhere, apparently most one-handed melee have been accidentally set at a higher attack speed than they should have been, which makes many melee fighters much more powerful than they should be, leaving casters in the dust. This is will be fixed in the next patch.

The ship stuff is still under construction, so not everything that they're trying to make will make it into the game. Josh mentioned that they're going to release something "really big" into the beta at some point. That might be the ship stuff. From what we've seen, your crew affects how the ship functions by manning certain posts (cannons, steering, & whatnot). Your crew can be injured and killed. We've seen at least one scripted sequence where you can interact with your crew socially (and you could be a real awful jerk to your crew). It also looks like your ship can be damaged, since there are ship repair materials to be found in the beta. Josh said something which I thought sounded like some your ship's crew might be recruited quest NPCs. I think Vektor, a character in the beta might be a recruitable crew member. As Algroth said, you can also buy new ships.

It does? I don't remember seeing that when I looked at the log. I couldn't find anything about the weapon's stats when I summoned it. I'm glad to hear it's that good. I also remember that the priest weapon spell had a pretty long casting time, which made using it pretty unfun.

Why would that cost a talent? That should cost money to hire someone to make the helmet.

He means the subclass trait of the Rogue/Assassin subclass. It deals more damage when attacking from stealth or invisibility.

The modals aren't supposed switch instantly, they take some time to turn off, correct? If they're not doing that, that might be a bug. Definitely agree. Probably agree.

I've had the same problem doing backstabbing. There's some a bug that intermittently makes NPCs far more aware than normal, making it impossible to backstab (or pickpocket, for that matter). When the bug is not active, backstabbing works very well.

Well, there's a single Vailian who wants to recreate the twisted experiments. She doesn't even trust her expedition mates enough to share those plans with them. I don't like the Vailians from what I'm seeing here, but they're not currently trying to kill & enslave the village piece by piece until there's nothing left, which is what Tikawara faced in its previous location.

No, it's the same ability from the last game. Yes, this is obviously an error.

I'm happy you were happy. I wasn't happy. My wizard didn't do anything in most fights, and that made him feel useless and weak. To me, Vancian magic makes wizards feel like wimpy computer programmers, not mighty masters of magic. It's not like wizards hit that much harder than the other classes. They hit slightly harder, and in return they barely got to fight at all. According to the Devs spells are actually intended to be more powerful in PoE2 than they were in PoE1, balanced by the drawbacks that (1) casting times are longer, (2) interrupts are more powerful, and (3) you have fewer spells you can cast per individual combat than in PoE1. Right now, playing wizards feels terrible, but that's just a tuning issue. We need grazing, or something equivalent. I like the design, which allows me to cast more often, and cast more powerfully. I was pretty meh about empower until I actually started using it. It's not somehow a replacement for problems with the wizard class, but it does feel great to use.

I'm really surprised by some of your choices. Just my thoughts on a few: This guy's malus' aren't so bad, and it's only active when you activate frenzy. You just need to be a little careful about positioning before you activate frenzy, so this guy isn't standing next to your resolve 3, constitution 3 wizard. I agree that any creature restrictions, but it includes Kith, Wilder & Beasts, which included most of the enemies from the last game, and including most of the really difficult fights, except for Concelhaut. The Bonded Grief range is 7m. You can easily play a ranged character with this class. I actually hope they give it a stronger pair of malus & benefit. After playing this class a fair amount, it's definitely too close to the base class, and feels bland. Stealth-oriented game play isn't easy to do. In combat, you can't enter stealth, and you can only enter invisibility with the help of expensive abilities. I love this class, but it is not a straightforward glass cannon, and it definitely seems specialized to me. For a lot of players, this would just be a Rogue who's extra vulnerable to damage. I'm shocked that anyone thinks this. This subclass seems like one of the most universal subclasses in the game. It's a great deal for a lot of druids, especially now that you have so fewer spells to cast in a single encounter. In contrast to you, I was totally imagining the more specialized king of subclasses that transform the playstyle you have, and I was dissapointed to see the more universal subclasses which are just a slight rehash of the base class. I suppose it's good that Obsidian made a mix for different types of people.

Interrupts are no longer a percentage chance, they work automatically, which makes them really powerful (Edit: Mage Slayer doesn't work this way, apparently). The Skulking-Terror Lagufaeth chief in the beta uses Mage Slayer abilities. I sent in a battlemage not knowing this, and he was completely shut down. Casters weren't, and aren't so unusual. For example, some of the Lagufaeth in this beta use arcane spells, but they aren't labelled "Lagufaeth wizard".

True, but as somebody else pointed out, they are not in the same art style as the other portraits in the game. I meant that there are collections of portraits collected specifically by fans of the game, that are fairly similar to the John Singer Sargent style portraits already in the game.

I'm feeling a little better about the penetration mechanic after playing with it a bit. It certainly makes weapon choice and armour choice feel more meaningful, and that makes all the martial characters more interesting. I think the type of system is much better than damage reduction. But it neeeeeeeds tweaking.

Wonder of wonders. Thanks for telling me.

I sure don't enjoy out of combat buffing. And I'm not sure the answer is to make buffs last longer. I think the answer is to make them more powerful and significant so it really matters if you have them. Now, buffs are pretty powerful as they are currently, and it's not hard to stack several buffs on each and every member of your party.

Oh, you're not wrong. There's issues with wizards. The penetration & grazing issues hurt them harder than any other class. Also, the Mercenary Wizard's spell choice, & Grimoire are not the best. Josh said that they'd add a few more Grimoires in a future update. I can't help feeling that a lot (thought certainly not all) of the wizard complaints we've gotten so far are due to the particular wizard everyone's playing with.

Sure. But a lot of people pick races based on RP reasons. Tamerlane, who posted this, got an unpleasant surprise. Also, Primordials and Wilder weren't exactly the most difficult combatants in PoE1, so it's not the most tactically useful buff. Iirc, it currently works exactly like it did in PoE1.

Keep a little faith. If people aren't enjoying the penetration system, they'll adjust it. If people aren't having fun without more talents, they'll add more. We're still months away from release, and these aren't hard changes to make. This is awful. There's a priest spell that helps you in combat, but if you can't get to combat in the first few seconds, you're not really being effective. It's awful for the Priest of Skaen, who trades the 5 free spells for a weakened sneak attack.

The fire godlike is clearly unfinished, or is incorrectly labelled. No use complaining about that. The inspirations and afflictions are going to have comprehensive explanations soon. In the meantime, I'm personally finding 6 types of status effects a lot easier to handle than the swarm of uncategorized status effects in PoE1. I hate the Boreal Dwarf racial buff. People have been complaining about it in other threads as well.

I remember feeling the same way, until halfway through my first play through when I realized that both the wizards in my party, who I'd been careful to build differently, were slowly becoming identical builds. That's when I realized that the "scribe spell" mechanic was cheap way to make wizards feel powerful, at the cost of making them ever feel distinct.

I feel your pain. You know, min/maxing is not absolutely necessary to make competitive characters. Their melee doesn't have to be garbage, they can be effective at long range, and they don't need 18 Int to be effective. And the fact that they can cast buffs and attack simultaneously means that they can don't have to do either optimally to be valuable. You're totally right about the limited phrase range. It's been a while since I've played a chanter for a significant time period. As of yet, I've only played a few fights with one in the beta. I'm not wrong that a chanter can easily apply three buffs simultaneously with both phrases and invocations. It's fine that you feel that way. A lot of other people feel differently, and there's no consensus that Chanters were either useless nor unfunny in PoE1. There are at least a few modifications to Chanters that make I think will make you like them at least a little better than PoE1.