cheesevillain

Of course, using teamwork to make your spells hit more accurately is a great. Needing teamwork to have your spells hit at all, in any circumstance, sucks. And currently, that's the place we're at. There's a pair of "gauntlets of reliability" that you can steal in Tikawara. They grant grazes with proficient weapons. Whoever I put those on immediately is the best damage dealer on my crew.

My apologies. It seems we're in perfect agreement. I bet the dev who wrote the ability didn't realize they'd programmed the ability differently in PoE1, and they'll fix this before the game is released.

I would... love that so much...

Well, one of the important things about the subclasses and multi-classes is that they should feel unique and cool without making the base class feel irrelevant. You sound like a person who likes the basic rogue class, and the base rogue class is still excellent in a way that no other build can quite replicate. That's a good thing. All three rogue subclasses are excellent at doing very specific things, and they're all great fun for people who want to focus on those specific things. The Devoted subclass has been getting extra love because people (including me) have been finding the balance of the penetration system really hard to deal with. The Devoted has to give up weapon proficiencies, and that is a BIG DEAL, because those weapon proficiencies are really, really, really useful, especially for fighters. I think the black jacket, in contrast, is an undervalued class.

There SHOULD be some sort of drawback for wizards. Every other class has limitations, and no single build can do take advantage of every single toy which that class offers. Wizards still are unique in that you can get every single damn toy. Having to wait a few seconds between two spells is not a significant drawback. It's also a drawback that makes (a) your choice of spells at levelup a worthwhile choice, and (b) your choice of grimoires that your carry a valuable choice. In PoE1, your choices of spells learned and grimoires were almost completely pointless. And that made building a wizard seriously lame. And last of all, there were very, very few people who played through PoE1 and used even 1/3 of the total spells for wizards. There's a crazy large selection. It feels really cool to be spoiled for choice for spells as a wizard, and you still will be in PoE2..

I remember thinking the same thing, until I actually used a chanter and found that most of those phrases were actually pretty dang useful. There's not a single phrase on that list that I haven't found useful at some point. A chanter is a swiss army knife. It has a lot of fussy parts, and every part is really situational, but if you get to know how all the parts work, you'll find it's really useful. And it's especially useful when you find that you can produce three buffs simultaneously for your entire party, no matter how spread out they are on the battlefield. No other class comes close to that. Chanters can do all that, and at the same time they're smacking your enemies in the face with a big sword. Chanters are sweet. They have a lot of build options, especially in PoE2. They're weird, and they're not for everybody. They're fussy and confusing at first, but they really reward a player who gets to know them.

I would point to games like Skyrim, Fallout NV, Xcom 2, D:OS 2, Witcher 3 as evidence that the best RPGs are successful, in large part, because of their mod tools. 86% of Skyrim's sales were on consoles. I'd be surprised if the majority of pc players ever modded their games either. I also had no idea there were any mods for Witcher 3 or Xcom 2. Regardless, I'm not arguing that they're not excellent, nor that they don't make games sell. I'm saying that they're EXPENSIVE. They're probably not worth the investment, even if they help sell more copies of the game. They're probably not feasible at this point in any case.

Almost all of the subclasses that I've actually tried (excluding a few wizard subs, & priest of Skaen) have proven to be a lot of fun to play. Assassin is brutal, especially matched with Devoted or Sharpshooter.

Some people are arguing that the ranged Ranger doesn't have enough offensive abilities, or enough interesting offensive abilities. I think everyone agrees that the Stalker subclass is currently lackluster. It's really conspicuous, especially since a lot of the other subclasses have a lot of polish (except the wizard subs, & a couple of the priests).

That's a *really* good idea from the manufacturers standpoint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence Oh, I don't know. Maybe after the tenth dartboard pops they'll start to get wise to the scheme.

Ah, I see. Well, the new system seems little like either Tyranny or PoE1. It seems like Fallout 1&2, and I've been missing that excellent gameplay for almost two decades.

Well, both pistols and melee weapons are useful, and you have a limited number of slots to put your weapons in, so the real advantage right now is that it's convenient. You can run a rogue wielding a stiletto & pistol in one slot, and hatchet & shield in the other. That rogue can attack at range, in close combat with two different damage types, and will be able to defend itself if things get harry (hatchets can interrupt attacks, so they're good defensive weapons). It'd be cool if you could fire your pistol in close combat, though.

The Tyranny UI was good for Tyranny, which involved a lot more moving parts (combo abilities, soooo many custom spells, etc.) per character than PoE2 has.

The penetration issue is mixed with the graze issue, which they said they were addressing.

Most of the current race abilities make you resistant to class of afflictions (negative status effects). Afflictions are grouped by attribute. Wild Orlans are resistant to Resolve afflictions, for example. Coastal Aumaua are resistant to Might afflictions. Island Aumaua can move through slushy stuff like mud, quicksand and water without penalty. Hopefully there'll be a lot of places in our maritime adventures where this will be relevant. I think most of the Godlikes currently have same/similar abilities to what they had before. The Death Godlike certainly do. I think Hearth Orlans still have minor threat. I can't remember the others off the top of my head.

I... don't like the sound of the EQ system. If all the buffs get stacked together, there's no interesting choices about how to mix your songs together. I agree with the others that Chanters were great in PoE. They're largely the same as they were. You can still stack three buffs at once with one active phrase, one lingering phrase, and one support invocation all at the same time. There's a phrases-over-invocations subclass called Troubadour that receives a longer linger time. It's pretty cool. If you want a REALLY dedicated support character, you can do something like multiclass a Chanter with a Paladin, and use phrases and your zealous auras simultaneously. And at the same time using support invocations and the many other Paladin support abilities.

I would... not enjoy this system.

Sorry, the ability is called "Evasive Fire". And currently it looks like it's bugged and doesn't work. It is, however, an offensive ability which the Ranger has by level 5.

You can indeed.

An important part of the new system where we now collect Grimoires instead of Scribed Spells is that the Grimoires are supposed to feel like cool items in and of themselves. Iirc, supposedly some of them will be unique items with special effects. Like, you'll get a Grimoire filled with Fire spells and +10% damage with fire spells. So, I'm not sure I agree that there should be a too big incentive to switch Grimoires, since that would conflict with the cool factor of wielding a unique one. Priests and Druids really need that boost, but once they have it, they'll still be heavily outclassed by wizards for flexibility.

It seems overpowered to me. You're gaining a power point for free, and in exchange you're penalized for spells that you probably weren't intending on casting in the first place.

You can (A) select the spells you know, (B) select the Grimoire you want from the ones you've already collected, and ©, switch that Grimoire with others in combat if you need a different spell. So you certainly can "select your spell loadout", and you can do more than "only pick what's given to you", since the mix of Grimoires will cover all the spells in the game. Base class wizard are still the most flexible base class in the whole game. It's the only class where you will be able to cast every single spell they're capable of in a single play through. It currently looks like the total will be well over a hundred spells. If that's not enough for you, you can Multiclass Wizard and Priest and receive by the last level 31 known spells (& Holy Radiance, which basically makes 32), before you add in Grimoires. Playing through the beta as my mainplayer wizard, I've found 4 different Grimoires, and I already have more spells than I know what to do with.

Modding tools take a lot more time and money to make. It's not something they can create on a whim. They'd have to sacrifice other stuff to get it in. They'd also probably need to have made that decision much earlier on in the game's development process. 2nd of all: You already can customize your character with console commands as you have suggested, so what exactly is wrong with the game as it is now? And in response to your title, I think the game already is... Classy.

The base Ranger played with ranged weaponry is a fine class right now. I'd never say no to more options, but it isn't in desperate need of sprucing up. The heal pet ability is exactly the sort of ability they shouldn't do this with because the a lot of people like to pull their focus away from the pet with their ability choices, and because many pet builds will emphasize the pet as a striker, and not as a tank.