Soulmojo

They made mortification of the soul not able to empower. Not inner death as far as I know.

I believe for two main reason. For one, monk don't combat defensive bonuses. Like at all. They have no deflection bonus of any kind, they don't have self healing. The only defensive bonus they have is that con con bonus, an iron wheel. That is why. As for duality int bonus, the reason being that they have no defensive bonuses -> reliance of disables, + some of their skills are low duration. So inherently they kept int bonus, so their disables could serve as an effective defense as well as to be able to maintain their low duration skills.

Your reasoning is right of course. Although I it is very easy to get up to 10 wounds even if you do not play with shattered pillar. One thing I noticed, that at the start of the combat ranged and melee enemies attack the closest first. So if your character is standing in the front he will be attacked by every ranged and a good amount of melee. + If you keep your threat level high with monk your monk get attacked the most. I don't know how the threath level is calculated, but it must be calculated through damage potential. if you combine that with mediocre armor and defenses, you can effectively maintain max wound. Monk was always a fine tuned killing machine where there is a sweet spot if you know what you are doing. Don't forget the various passives which also help wound gain. Not quite hard in this second installment. Now it is quite hard to put this into words why I think this stacking intellect bonus is harmful so all of you get what I see. No question that math is on your side on this subject. Sometimes I question this myself or more precisely why do I bother to raise it. I have to start on the subject of necessity. In PoE1 there were two main routes you could take. There was the face dps torments reach monk route, and there was the facetank swift strikes monk. There having high intellect or not didn't matter, because there were alternatives to reach max potential whether you focused intellect or not. In this second installment the abilities and the class itself is designed such a way, that you want to use most abilites and you will reach max potential by using most of them. Since in this game buffs and debuffs have a much bigger role than it was in the first game, it is vital to maintain buffs and debuffs at an adequate level to reach max potential. Some abilites monk have have very low duration, and some abilites have ok duration. Now since you want to maintain the low duration abilities too, you will invest in intellect like the current builds do. But this puts abilites with ok duration to the broken category eg. torments reach, stunning blow, blade turning etc. If you don't invest into intellect with duality and stats, and keep on low level, then you can basically ignore a lot of abilities designed for you to use as they become quite less effective which is not fun. I would much rather play with a type of monk, where the base duration of abilites and abilites effects provide adequate enough duration to maintain with power level upscale, even when you decide to not invest into intellect at all. And where you don't have an option to stack this much intellect because you don't necessary need it therefore it is not a necessity. Take fighter for example. It relies heavily on self buff abilites, but the buffs it has have adequate base duration, and those base durations upscales with power level well enough, to a point where intellect is not that important commodity. it is good to have, you will probably better off having some extra, but not vital. To summarize it monk relies too much on intellect compared to other stats and Duality of Mortal presence INT bonus harmfully helps and promotes this reliance. At the same time it locks the possiblity to increase the durations via balancing. If you take this bonus, and balance durations according so, you remove this heavy reliance on intellect, you create an ability where both effect are equally useful(CON and PER) , and remove every potential broken synergy too. I wrote in previous comments in other topics that I don't like a design where you have to have some ability or bonus to make other abilites function.

The swift strikes proposition (15sec) I made in connection of dualities INT bonus swap to PER. I did test it. I did the closed beta too. I gave up playing the game for some time now because of balances issues and the clear necessity of an overhaul patch. The game was so blatantly easy I didn't wanted that to spoil the entire game and story for me. Monk was especially overpowered with turning wheel + lighning strikes, the +10 int bonus and infinite stun + what I've read about the tier 9 abilites. On dualities INT side I'm 100% firm. That needs a change.

I don't know yet. As I said I wasn't able to test it. I catched the description this morning, but I had to go off to work. I will be able to tell more once I got home. In my opinion though yes, you wont be able to spam stun lock torments reach.

What is your problem exactly and with what? Turning Wheel should stay as it is now. It's really nice that your abilities last longer and you don't have to recast them all the time, like when you play a berserker and lose 5 INT all the time. I know it sounds nice, but the player should be able to negate the penalty the most, not flip it entirely. There is no other ability in the game that allows you to do that. That is my problem with intellect bonus of duality. I'm not saying it should be capped at half value, I'm saying this causes balance issues.

Well a 12+ sec stunning blow and a 8+ sec aoe stun from torments reach - which you can repeat - is something I consider OP. Whispers of treason (charm) with a free +50% duration is I Consider op. Chanter invocations with free +50% duration + 100% aoe is a bit op. etc. Again take it with a grain of salt what I write about what is OP or not, it's just every way I look at it it feels like something which is vastly outperforms every other bonus.

What is your problem exactly and with what?

Can you? My last xp was that you can choose only one. Thank you, good catch.

If you start a new character with shattered pillar sub, one of the passives it receives from the start includes this info. (They hid it well ) Not sure I wrote down the exact line accurately, but it is there.

Hello, I compiled a small list of changes to the monk in 1.1. I'm sure I missed something, if I did, make a comment about it and I include that into the list. The second part is my...list of complaints I think the monk still needs, handle that with precaution. I didn't wrote that to make a divine statement, I just believe those are necessary. Swift strikes - was granting 20% attack speed bonus, now granting 15% Lightning strikes upgrade - This ability was nerfed from 30% lightning bonus to 15% lightning damage A nerft was surely coming for lightning strikes, I think they went a little too much. The damage should have been adjusted to 20% instead of 15%. The swift strikes nerf I didn't see coming, though I guess they wanted to tone down dual wield speed and casting speeds. Dual wield passive - this was nerfed from 20% to 15% possibly for attack speed purposes.I don't like this specifically, but ok, whatever... Turning wheel upgrade - this was granting 5% per wound stacking up to 50% damage, it was changed to 2% per wound for a total of 20% damage bonusThis nerf was something like a sure thing, you might agree, you might not, I think this is within a margin of acceptance. A 3% per wound would be better. Inner death - this tier 9 ability was granting 500% critical damage on crit it. Now it is providing 300% damage on crit.I think this ok, though if you empower this ability, it is still potentially one shot most stuff. Shattered pillar - you still gain wound from damage dealt, but there is a line there which states "not including abilities"I don't know what this means precisely as I didn't tested this but most likely means you can only gain wound from auto attack. What should be changed in my opinion: Duality of mortal presence There are two key point I would like to discuss here, which I can guarantee you will not like or more likely hate, but it is necessary. To discuss and change. Intellect bonus - This intellect bonus you can stack up to 10, granting +50% duration on everything and 100% area effect bonus.This is damaging to character, and multiclass balance. It makes any caster mulitclass super powerful, resulting very large area effect spells and very long spell durations. Other than that it makes any monk and multiclass stun, caused affliction last very very long. Not only that, but the stacked intellect overlaps with clarity of agony upgrade, making it semi useless, plus the constitution bonus + iron wheel armor bonus also becomes sub optimal compared to this. I'm sorry but this is a fact. Now I thought about this a lot since I made a comment about this issue, and the conclusion is the change the intellect to perception. Monk does not have a perception bonus, but many of monks ability focuses on making a hit, and doing crits. This would help shattered pillars for instance to dish out the necessary damage, and would help all the others subclasses too making it more likely to activate abilities through crit. Plus it removes the clear imbalance this high intellect bonus provides. The only issue here after the change is swift strikes, specifically its duration. I commented - complained - about the ability duration numerous times now. I was shot down then, because with high enough intellect - duality int bonus hello - it clearly have long enough duration. And I don't like this. I firmly believe that an ability should be able to last long enough if you semi focus on intellect or not at all. So theoretically if youi change intellect bonus to perception with duality, then a 15 sec duration this ability needs, which balances the +50% duration of intellect bonus from duality. Upgrades - duality of mortal presence has two upgrades from which you can select one.My issue with this is that you cannot choose both. Normally I wouldn't raise an issue about upgrades, because an ability has one effect and you upgrade that one effect one way or another if you could choose both then it becomes overpowered. With duality, you have TWO effect, and you can upgrade one of those two effect, making either one or the other bonus even more sub par. Duality of mortal presence should be about a choice. Body and mind depending on the situation, but due to able to choose one upgrade, it is not a choice at all. You choose an upgrade for which bonus you are more likely use, and stick with that stance till the rest of the game.

You know i can't shake the feeling that all of the problems with healing, healing bonuses and clear immortality, is rooted in the fact that there is no limit in combat what a character can endure. Most of the problems could be resolved if we introduce the endurance/health system we had in pillars 1. That way you have a clear limitation to character survivability. All 'cannot die' effect can be changed to 'cannot be knocked out' effect, but still take hp damage untill the character dies. It would shift the focus from healing to stack real survivability, since you cannot be immortal with enough sustained healing. In PoE1 the real issue with that system was the limit on camp rest and camp supplies. Since this limit is not present here, it would function adequately. I think this is the only way. +++ We have medical supplies in this game. It would not be out of reach to introduce a first aid or medical skill where a trained characted can heal hp and cure injuries with med supplies. With it you could limit immersion breaking resting even more. And this would support the endurance/hp system.

My best team was : Overworld Priest - Druid (Cat) - Druid (cat) - Chanter - Ranger - Barbarian Bosses Priest - Druid - Druid - Chanter - Wizard - Wizard Each time I used a Paladin, it was clearly inferior in all points. Same for Fighter. The worst classes ever, without any doubt. Well, I had pallegina in my team, and I finished the game without any other heal besides hers once I had her. I didn't really used potions too except dragon fights. Granted, I played on veteran difficulty only. Once I popped sacred Immolation and chain heal I was set. Plus give paladin some lore, then twin stones scroll, and you have your overpowered aoe character. If you have sacred immolation nothing can kill your party really. If you had two paladin with sacred immolation, then all you had to do is sit calmly waiting for the enemy to drop dead.....maybe cast some of those twin stones scrolls....

I don't agree with you on this. Palading was quite ok in PoE1 in my opinion. With sacred immolation, and the heals the paladin was an integral part of my group. Sure, 4-5 flames of devotion would have been better instead of two, but nonetheless, with a good armor and the right weapon it performed quite ok as a dps.

Monk: I would add the intellect bonus of duality of mortal presence. +10 intellect is quite overpowered. also makes clarity of agony upgrade useless. Duality INT bonus should be some other stat. which does not overlap with other monk inspiration. I thinked perception...maybe Plus I really think torments reach stun duration should be nerfed to like 2 second. with high INT and power level bonus you can reach quite long duration.