Druitt

Since the last patch I've had several summon figurines that now say that they're out of charges. There's never been any indication that they have a fixed number of charges, and there still isn't any indication on the one or two I have that aren't out of charges. Is this a bug or has it always worked that way and I'm just now running into it? If I knew there were limited charges, I would've been much more careful with using them.

I really like the Escape ability. A tank is all about locking down a group of enemies, but that also results in the tank being multiply locked down. Occasionally, I want to reposition the tank, or I really, really want to have him knock down a caster who may be about to cause a lot of trouble, and Escape lets him do that without being locked down. It also lets him close the gap early on to start tanking at a back-liner. Riposte is also cool. So I think you gain more on the Rogue side than you lose on the Fighter side.

Yeah, I was surprised -- shouldn't have been I guess -- that which party member attempts the task matters a lot. Party Assist is not symmetrical: it's your ability plus some contribution from the rest. (I'd assumed it was the max of the rest, but your example shows it's not that simple. I'm curious as to the formula as well.

OK, something weird was happening. I also had a wizard companion and perhaps lost track of who was who, or maybe the animation for a weapon is red particles like missiles. I could swear I saw four+ missiles cast per encounter, or saw multiple missiles cast then looked at my character and still had missiles to cast.

I chose a Loremaster for my first PoE 2 character without doing a lot of research. I can't check right now, but I got the impression last night that the Chanter's phrases enable not just the Chanter's invocations, but also the Wizard's spells. (I.e. the Wizard could cast missiles more often than I would have expected.) Is this true? If so, it's a very pleasant surprise I wasn't counting on.

You can always keep Eder as a Fighter, the priestess as a Priest, then choose anything else you want. Just remember that the whole per-rest/per-encounter mechanism has changed with everything basically shifting to per-encounter with a boost mechanism that lets you do more in one encounter, then requires a rest to reset. I just got the Priestess, and don't remember the details but I'm not sure that she's a fully-healing-oriented Priest. If not -- and you'd need to clarify that -- even having a bit of healing wouldn't be redundant for the Watcher. Multi- and sub-classing definitely complicate things. I avoided sub-classing since it's hard to evaluate the tradeoffs involved, but I multi-classed and am going to multi-class all of my companions, to try the whole thing out.

You start out with Eder, who you can class as a Fighter or Rogue. You'll quickly get a priestess that you can class as a Priest or Monk. This is pretty genius because you're not stuck running into a companion who is the same class as you, since you get to set their class when they join the team. You can even multi-class them to be both -- i.e. Eder as a Fighter/Rogue -- a Swashbuckler, I think. I've only played up to the first town, so don't know, but it looks like PoE 2 is pretty brilliant in this respect. Now whether the class (or classes) you choose for yourself turn out to play well for the entire game is another matter. (Sorry Enoch, I'm a new poster, so my post was in moderation when you posted and ended up sort of sniped yours once it was approved. Thanks for the info that some companions are locked into a primary class and can only choose multi-classing with that class.)

You have no experience with any kind of RPG at all? (If you do have some experience, you may prefer one play style over another.) In terms of straightforward to play and not getting crushed, I would recommend a single-class Fighter, no subclass. They're tough and flexible. In general, for your first play through you will want to avoid multi classing and sub classing. Once you've used and understand the base capabilities, you can better decide how to mix-n-match them (multi class) or trade them off (sub class). In the classical RPG genre, there was a "holy trinity": a tank, a healer, and DPS (damage-dealer). The tank is tough and tries to get opponents to focus on them. The healer keeps the tank -- and everyone else -- alive with buffs and heals, and the DPS adds damage into the mix because the tank often trades off damage-dealing for toughness and survival. You start the game with Eder as a companion, and you can class him to be a Fighter (which he was in PoE 1) -- i.e. a tank -- or a Rogue (DPS), and in the first town you can get a priestess to join your party and she can be classed as a Priest (healer) or Monk (DPS). So you could chose to be a Fighter, class Eder as a Rogue, and keep the priestess as a Priest. (Now that I think about it, she may be less capable of healing, due to her religious orientation, than some Priests.) Or you could choose to be DPS-oriented ("Striker" in PoE 2 parlance) or support, and have Eder be a Fighter and the priestess be a Priest. You might also read about the energy source each class uses. Some classes start with an energy level and spend it down, others start with minimal energy and build it up, and others don't use energy but have limited skill counts. One key thing you'll want to think about is AoE (Area of Effect) skills/spells can hit your allies unless they mention enemies specifically. Other games you may have played may or may not have this "friendly fire", so be aware when considering. I tend to always play a Mage/Wizard first in RPGs, but I shied away from a pure Wizard in PoE and Poe@ because many of their best spells can put a serious hurt on friends as well as foes. (You can cast the spells to avoid friendly fire, but you might not be able to fully use the power of AoE, and it's also possible that your in-motion team-mates may step into your fire.) Just something to think about.

I've only played briefly, but I really liked dual-classing Eder. For example, he can use the Rogue ability -- forget its name -- that lets you disengage and leap to a new location, which was a great gap-closer after a party member unexpectedly dropped. On general principle, I'm trying my first run-through with myself and every companion dual-classed. I stayed away from sub-classing myself on the first go-round. I'm first playing a Loremaster (Wizard/Chanter) and it would have been interesting to subclass the Wizard for Evocation, but make up for the lack of summons by subclassing the Chanter to Troubadore (for faster summoning). But I wasn't sure of the tradeoffs.

I've been trying a duo with me as Monk and picking up Eder (Fighter) as my tank, on Normal. One of the things I've liked so far is to get the Rogue talent for backstabbing, and then I can run around behind folks that are being tanked and do some serious damage.