divjak

actually, all shields should be able to be used with 2 handed weapons, its just you hold them on a back, and let's say instead of pure deflection bonus, you get a bonus against flanking or disengagement attacks

in past, however, tower shields were used by Romans, and later on by crossbowmen in game modal makes sense, but you cant use it with crossbows realistically, it should be possible to use with crossbows, when modal is not on, shield is on the back and provides no defense, and when you turn it on, you put it in front, and can't move, so using xbows and rifles should be possible, and with no nonsense of reducing the accuracy

this is a video that shows all kinds of different setups in a dueling scenario with you having gambeson at most, also not heaving shield, or paired weapon in another hand, does not give you more accuracy or more options, its always better to have either something in your off hand or 2 handed weapon. People(civilians) used a single handed weapon because it is easier to carry in everyday life, then it is to lumping around with a shield or 2-hander. It was common with archers to carry a single weapon as a backup. Dual wielding was either done with 2 short weapons, ar a sword+dagger, because having 2 long weapons limits you, they clash with each other, limiting your attack, while providing not much for defense

Amount of armor changes everything i terms how you use weapons(shields are weapons as well) this is how bucklers work when you use no or light armor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC_g750Ziss and in heavy armor, it becomes more like BoN posted videos from before so basically combat style depends more on armor than anything, fighting with a buckler in light armor is more similar to fighting with only a sword in light armor, then it is to fighting in buckler in heavy metal armor. Good armor makes you almost invulnerable, only limitation is price and it has to be tailor-made for each individual. Fighting in heavy armor came down to wrestling the guy on the floor, after few hits from mace, and then opening visor and stabbing with dagger to the face

lots of solo builds have low resolve because most of the time you use stealth to completely bypass 90% of fights, and in other fights you cheese kite and have summon figurines to take hits for you, while you focus on offense to finish fights fast, and that completely falls under 'use items and abilities to avoid getting hit'. That also works because you know the game inside out, and where every item is located as for your barb, you basically need to waste other classes resources on you and items to nullify your weakness, so its fair, but thats the choice you made, and its good that you can play like that. Actually its a sign of a good system that allows you to play this way and still manage to beat it then again is not really an argument against stat system Imagine you play PnP DnD at the table with your friends, and make barbarian with 8 strength, because when you start you know there are gauntlets of ogre power just behind a corner. or you make a thief with min dex and strength, but maxed cha and int, because you wont to pass all social and investigation checks, and you have a priest in your party that ill buff your combat stats every fight :D

To that a I agree mostly. They are possibly breaking more stuff while they want to patch up resolve which was a dump stat for almost everyone because concentration was no longer bound to it. But instead of adding something new and useful to resolve (like for example that it influences afflictions on you) while leaving the rest of the stats as they used to be - they toppled the whole thing over. While I'm not totally against the change when I only look at STR and RES I also fear that this change may lead to a whole string of consequences that are not intended. Like now we will suddenly have nukers and healers with a lot of deflection. Before the change they were strong, now they are masters of melee defense... and stuff like that. Still the druid is not really gimped with this change. Still works perfectly well. It's just not possible any more to min-max him in such a way that he can do everything very well that a druid can possibly do. Don't know if this is a bad thing to be honest. resolve was not a dump stat if you play POTD 1 save hardcore, on every char(unless you had another means to avoid damage through abilities or items on players that were not supposed to take damage all the time), and was always pumped on those you expect to take damage, another thing is when you save scumming, then you can finish the game with all stats at 10 stat block was fine, you had 2 offensive stats, 2 defensive stats, and 2 utility stats Offensive Might- amount of impact that you do, be it damage or healing Perception- ability to hit, crit, and interrupt Defensive Constitution- ability to take damage Resolve- ability to avoid damage and interrupt(which is hugely important for stuff like potions, second wind, and defensive buffs) Utility-those affect both offense and defense Dexterity- faster attacks, but also because your recovery is faster you can lets say drink your potion sooner in those o **** moments Intelligence- affects aoe and duration of both buffs and debuffs Every stat meant something, and this robust system allowed you to play with the builds for hours, especially now with multiclassing, just by changing to strength, you change the balance ratio and all went to hell, just by doing that without going into details, you have cut at least 50% of viable builds, and lots of built-in class features concerning paladins, druids and so on

point is that this game was designed from ground up for stat block with might, and everything worked then just fine. Now when they changed to strength, it brought a boatload of issues, and if they dont plan to revert back, they will need to make class specific rules, which bring another boatload of issues with multiclassing like in DnD. Might type of stat block was robust, worked the same for every class, and I dont see any good reason why would you change that, its a prime example of fixing what is not broken to break it, only arguments against that were of emotional nature, that it doesn't feel DnD where all wizards must be frail weaklings

Its says in a class description if you shift you cant cast, its black on white, plain and simple, so how do you dont understand? lol maybe you dont grasp concept of a hybrid because I can't see anything punishing in not shifting, and still having powerful nukes, so maybe you made a concept in your head that not shifting is somehow punishing in every scenario? You can cast storm that is useful because of stun, and that is all, while 90%+ of your picks on level up are impotent spells, there is no sane person who would pick shifter as a single class right now, because 90% of your level up choices dont mean ****. If you are high strength, you could cast impotent spells or shift and do massive damage in melee, that must be a hard choice On the other hand, if you pump resolve, then you can take fury and be done with it, because your shifts will be crap

nuking is not a good option is not an argument, and shifter now basically needs every stat shifter in its current state works only if you plan to multiclass, and have lets say bear looking monk, because after you get wild strike, rest is meh Before stat change, the shifter was a hybrid, youl could stay in back, and support/nuke and you could shift and go for melee in bear form, or run for enemy casters as a wolf, now it seems that its no brainer. I dont see how having fewer viable build options is a good thing in any scenario How shifter is designed, is to encourage you to shift from one form to another form, so you get constant heal and keep tanking and fighting. It punishes you for casting spells because you need to take one more step than normal Druid if you wanna cast, turn back to human form, and need to pay extra recovery time. It’s not a subclass that favor hybrid, it’s a melee focused subclass. It’s not a no brainer, but it is how it is designed, you are better at attacking than casting. If you wanna play a real hybrid Druid, there are livegiver and normal Druid. so what? before stat changes, you could have a viable melee shifter build, and still be a viable nuker, nowadays, all of your spell picks are meh. Also, shifter does not punish you at all, but forces you to chose, do you wont to cast or fight, actually it was great subclass for players who wont to cast as well

nuking is not a good option is not an argument, and shifter now basically needs every stat shifter in its current state works only if you plan to multiclass, and have lets say bear looking monk, because after you get wild strike, rest is meh Before stat change, the shifter was a hybrid, youl could stay in back, and support/nuke and you could shift and go for melee in bear form, or run for enemy casters as a wolf, now it seems that its no brainer. I dont see how having fewer viable build options is a good thing in any scenario

druid spells are mostly nukes and some healing/buff, and their class feature is shapeshifting ok if you are fury, but what about single class shifters? They are MAD as hell, you need resolve for spells, and strength for shifting, so basically if you pick shifter, either your spell picks or shifting will be subpar. Ciphers are in the same boat, you can go to control powers and strength, or get damage powers and have poor focus generation

well, that was an issue in POE1, basically, you would pick best 4 spells for level, and out of the 4, you would mostly use 1 or 2 of them. Wizards do get grimoire, which is kinda like their level 0 feature I feel with stat changes and everything, druids are worst out of the casters

well that excludes barbarians as both defenders and controllers, carnage seems like a gimmick now, and barb is not worth it unless you want just damage dealer the build I had in mind exactly skald/barb, using carnage with modal to debuff multiple enemies, get lots of procs for skald feature, and using shouts for damage, debuff or control, depending on what weapon modal I am using

resolve is not pumping casters for damage benefit, cause now if they wont to do damage with weapons, including wands, scepters, or rod, they need strength for that as well. Resolve now splits focus of a build, as for pure offensive caster you need both strength and resolve,which is why the new system is mechanically weaker, now if you pump res and dump might, you'll have more deflection, and weaker attacks, yaaay also messes up some classes like chipers, all in all its a bad decision, based on the outcry from some DnD fans, that made this game far less interesting mechanically. Game is now mechanically weaker as for cast times, spells are now per encounter, having fast fireballs spam every battle would take any difficulty from the game, now its not a problem, people who dont like to be challenged, can play on easy

I think it depends on how you view casting time in general. Personally I see it as a new mechanic, as casting time wasn't at all the same in PoE 1. If they've removed a mechanic that effected casting time originally (interrupts being ubiquitous), and removed an advantage that went along with that mechanic from an attribute (Concentration), to me it makes logical sense that Resolve should now benefit from a new advantage that reflects the mechanistic changes that have been made in PoE 2 (longer casting time). Honestly I prefer they first fix cast time inconsistency. Then add whatever spell bonus to Res. Any test or playthrough or feeling is based on a unpolished spell system now, which is inaccurate. Like we all feel fireball and summon spell takes years to cast, but spells like Bounding Missile are Ok to me. They are powerful and has a fair cast time. its not inconsistency, but balancing, fireball and summons have the bigger effect on battle than magic missile, only cast time i feel is off is for conjured melee weapons

also BTW, i dont think stat that exemplifies stubbornness(resolve), should be connected on how strong you can manifest your fireball, actually if i want to put something else in resolve that makes sense to make it worthwhile, that would be the duration of effects, aoe size fits intelligence very well, especially when bonus you get from intelligence avoids friendly fire. as for casting times, well, there is new mechanics with the concentration, and the fact you can switch targets or move aoe placement during cast time is a good compromise. You get longer casting times, but your spells are more flexible

I dont see how it should, we cant even define what spiritual strength is, i would argue that those who dont work out have low spiritual strength, because body is your temple :D

If we put the fact that Might system is mechanically better aside, there were 5 playable NPCs in POE1 that were casters, Durrance, Kana, and Hiravas had higher might, while Aloth and grieving mother had low might. I never thought that mother and Aloth acted strong, nor that Kana Hiravas and Durrance were physically weak, so they exactly acted according to their stats :D

that's true, but I think they included describing might as some form of spiritual strength just to appease to people with preconceived notion that for magic you dont need any form of fitness. Might over strength system is way more robust and customizable system, which why I think is mechanically stronger and thus better for the game

might does not need to be a spiritual strength at all, because all we know, manifesting high voltage bolts of lighting is not for the faint of heart The way DnD developers thought of a system of how magic should work is not reality because we dont have magic in real life. The closest thing we have for reference in real life for magic is Gods of mythology flinging lightning balls, stage magicians, and cannibal tribes thinking that eating hearts and drinking blood will make them invulnerable. Neither of those dont give an impression of being wimpy and physically inept couch potatoes. Just because DnD system made it out so mages are wimps, does not mean that every game should follow same rule, and its not like you couldnt make powerful mage with low might in POE1, actually controlling mages who could dump might were arguably more powerful IMO

I totally agree, I actually preferred this system over DnD one, who says that manifesting powerful balls of fire is not physically exhausting, while lets say messing with minds needs a bit of attention to details and thought to it. the issue is if people who complain about might mages are a vocal minority, while most of the people just play the system, and dont complain because they like it The biggest issue with people is when encountering something new, is that they have preconceived notions from previous experiences of how it should work, even when taking a look changes made in POE2 from POE1 lots of people think without checking that everything should work like they used to in previous games. The usual excuse by those people is " its not intuitive" which is in my opinion just excuse for i am just lazy and dumb, because most tooltips will say you exactly what you need to know. :D

wizards didn't have to have high might, actually, best of their spells were of controlling nature, and that means you could go low or average might, with high perception and intellect. At start of POE1 level 1 you could cast magic missile or oil, guess which one was nerfed :D I liked the might more than new strength, because every stat had some meaning to every class, and this doesn't change much, its just that now you will be choosing to do damage either with spells or implements. Now we have issue of real muscle mage, holding wands and casting debuff/buff spells :D

it think shifter is actually best for "non shifter" druid play, since you cant cast while shifted and doesn't have any special mechanics tied to shifting and spellcasting, it can be used purely as defensive/last ditch tool

just play the game it will happen eventually there is another problem with soulbound items, and its their power level, so when you find one, you usually dont switch it ever because its best thing ever for that slot, which makes treasure hunting, and item switching kinda pointless

Whats the best way for applying lets say club proficiency modal to reduce will, on multiple enemies at once? does it work with barbarian carnage or fighter cleaving stance?