Zeitzbach

I find it funny no one is talking about Arcana scrolls. Extremely cheap. Some of the T9 mats can be bought and 15 arcana isn't hard to get. Also they only take like 1.5 seconds to cast a meteor storm or a maelstorm. I dropped one Maelstorm for the lol with a level 15 takehu and he killed 90% of concelhaut torn banner merc before they even walk through the bridge. Any spells with long cast time but op effect you want to break? Just toss the scroll.

Yeah, Body Attunement and Pain Block are probably the the current class staples. They're both very solid powers. Of course, Druids can give the same Robust inspiration that Pain Block gives, except as a Level 3 cast instead of a level 4 one . . .and the druid spell is an AoE. I would say that's fair considering druid has less resources (Cipher with drain whip) and it's a melee-spell. It just so happen that most of druid T3 is also mediocre anyway so they won't feel bad using it if they get the chance and don't have to be using giant AoE.

Add Oswald at this point for a three some. And that old man from the bathing house. I doubt they will pass a constitution check :D Just have the whole romance experience taken place in the maaaaggiiiiicccc waaterrrrrr. - Serafen

Yeah Body Attunement is really good for mid-game combat where you don't reliably crit enough to get through 12+ armor rating like the Steel golem. The beam is also good for dealing with those too because it is reflex-based and deal great damage in the early game. And Pain block is still a very good spell because of how armor damage reduction work. Even squishies turn into a tank at a press of a button. I would say Cipher is solid as an offensive-utility char with good CC, good damage and good buffs. It just so happens that they do have too many trash spells people will pick up on the 1st playthrough thinking it's good because of their experience with PoE 1.

Add Oswald at this point for a three some. And that old man from the bathing house.

The change to scaling is why pretty much all conjuration type are terrible atm. Even Druid Shapeshift suffer from the same thing. If you're a weapon user atm, you have to find a good legendary gear with + damage scaling or extra bonus damage proc or you're extremely weak for a damage dealer. I wish the sub-class get actual bonus to make conjuration/shapeshift useful.

Pretty much. Thought certainly a monster-type enemy can have better armor rating by default or something. Turns out the tankiest thing in the game is probably that Steel Soldier you fight at Arkemyr manor before you get bloated pen, accuracy and damage.

You'll have to explain to me what's brilliant about attaching on-hit paralysis on top of otherwise basic mooks and call it a day. Probably because it's the only time the game become frustrating hard and some people enjoy it for some reason. I was 2-manning it with just my squishy Druid and Eder and it wasn't fun. Not because of the paralysis but because of the stupid 60+ deflection while I only have, what? 40 accuracy? I could do everything right and still flop the fight because the dice roll wasn't being helpful.

I love how the biggest storm you get during the course to Poko island, there's a companion options with Serafen where you simply ask him to be by your side which seems unique to only that situation. Gawd I wish there were more. If only there's an option to piggyback ride Serafen with an Orlan char, Eder style... Now I know what needs to be drawn.

So there's an exploit with a full attack skills on dual hand where you can just get the first swing in, pause, give command to do normal attack, and reuse skill. This cancels the 2nd swing but allow you to get another swing in with no recovery time. It does eat resource but when I don't expect the fight to be super long, being able to throw in a saber crit every 0.5 second is really nice.... especially if you stack Gravecalling on an ally or a pet before doing anything to give yourself +60% ice damage on everything you do. And some can probably see why this will be really exploitable with Cleaving Stance and Devotion or Wounding Strike. And speaking of bug, it's a shame whirling strike is also bugged to not deal any raw damage as intended (there goes easy 80-90 damage from a spin) but fortunately Frostseeker with Twin Shot and Driving flight is so busted it answers everything in the game outside "Single boss with 3k health". But then Stealth exploit exists with evasive fire for that.

You don't even need to "Land". You just need to graze with it and the next one gets a guaranteed hits. TBH, PoE CC war was more tedious than hard. "Oh hey this one has a fampyr Ima use my Anti-Dominate and laugh". "Oh wait, I'm out of casts! time to rest and laugh at them for the next 4 encounters." Perma CC war is some of the most boring and cheap illusion of difficulty you can find in a turn-ish game. If anything, I prefer the game has careful comp that can break the standard "1-2 Front, 1-2 Mid, 1-2 Back" comp. Back to the day of Ragnarok Online in its prime. You have skills that create a defensive zone that block all melee attack. You have defensive zone that negate range attack. They can't stack and you can push enemies out of them., You also have curse zone that silence all casters in that area. The game already has sigil and silence debuff. Utitlize them and design hard critical encounter with them. Paralyze is against will and only debuffs deflection, so it's not guaranteed to land after graze by any means. It wasn't too difficult to counter with priest, but at least it added an extra layer of complexity, and it was also harder to deal with or land solo. Again, not saying it was perfect, but it was better than it is now. But it still suffers from the same case of "We can counter it but enemies don't" which is the same issue we're facing. We have the tool. Enemies don't have the answer. This is the core of everything wrong with PoE II beside the "lolinstakill". I wouldn't mind if they rework Druid Maelstorm into a DoT-heavy not burst heavy while still keeping the damage potential. At least give the enemy priests a chance to heal and enemy fighter to turn on unbending.

You don't even need to "Land". You just need to graze with it and the next one gets a guaranteed hits. TBH, PoE CC war was more tedious than hard. "Oh hey this one has a fampyr Ima use my Anti-Dominate and laugh". "Oh wait, I'm out of casts! time to rest and laugh at them for the next 4 encounters." Perma CC war is some of the most boring and cheap illusion of difficulty you can find in a turn-ish game. If anything, I prefer the game has careful comp that can break the standard "1-2 Front, 1-2 Mid, 1-2 Back" comp. Back to the day of Ragnarok Online in its prime. You have skills that create a defensive zone that block all melee attack. You have defensive zone that negate range attack. They can't stack and you can push enemies out of them., You also have curse zone that silence all casters in that area. The game already has sigil and silence debuff. Utitlize them and design hard critical encounter with them.

I do get tired of repeating that In a Dps contest, you are either first or you are last. You brought up why play barbarian when you can play fighter for AoE. THat's the exact situation. All class is currently viable. Some are just more viable and it will stay that way if you keep having them overlap in roles and moments. You might as well ask now why I would play a Wizard if Druid has way better AoE damage when Wizards do get nerfed? Is it the CC? The self-buff? Not important enough in the current game. More damage = win. Set them apart if you want them to all be viable without overshadowing the other. It's not the dps contest, or at least it shouldn't be. Like, let's say Ability 1 deals 20% more damage. Ability 2 deals less damage but also has a debuff. You know, a debuff that's actually relevant because neither of these abilities oneshots enemies. They are not the same, but supposedly at least (roughly) balanced. Wizards should not have inferior damage to druids. Wizards should have better alpha damage, self buffs and actually useful conjured weapons. Druids should have heals, as well as better DoTs/sustained damage + shapeshift. You know, like it was in PoE1. I feel like I shouldn't be explaining such basic game design stuff. It has been proven multiple times in games like this where action have interval, that it's far better to kill and prevent damage than to allow damage and deal with it. Once your damage go above a certain point, you can trivialize the game combat. This was also the thing in PoE 1. I always play Druid and I like Hiravias. I got through 90% of the contents in PoE on PotD using 2 free-cast hailstorm at every fight. AoE so large and damage so high only the tankiest monster remain alive and you have to me in WM II for the lowbie to get to fight.. until I use the 2nd set of Hailstorm. Unless you make enemies strong enough to be worth CCing, there's no point to CCing. Right now, the only damage threat in enemy team above level 10 are wizard because they scale with levels while the fighters and rangers are still using low-level gear and never dealing more than 30 damage a hit unless they crit. There's no need to CC. There's no need for immortal buff. THere's no need for devotion. You drop the wizards, you win because every other type of enemies are both weak and braindead. The only other somewhat threatening one are the fampyr because they can charm and that's it. CC was perfectly viable in PoE1. I'd say fixing outright gamebreaking stuff is the top priority. Fixing just OP stuff is about the same priority as buffing trash. Yes, Cipher has a lot of spells in need of buffs, especially at lower PLs, probably deserves its own thread. CC wasn't just perfectly viable in PoE 1. Paralysis scroll was broken as you can trivialize any combat with it. The crafting material is infinite anyway if you just rest and money is not an issue if you don't horde every unique items in the game. If anything, the reason CC was viable was because they somewhat balanced the game around you having a priest to prevent CCs. Now priests are gone and CC got dumpstered especially with all the easy talents to "Gain resistance". You can even just eat the lobster. CCing in PoE II is a joke once you start dealing damage and have superb/legendary armor. The only thing that is really killing me in my PotD run on ranger is Serafen Wild perverted mind exploding in my face at the first 12 levels, dealing like 150 damage stun instantly.

I do get tired of repeating that In a Dps contest, you are either first or you are last. You brought up why play barbarian when you can play fighter for AoE. THat's the exact situation. All class is currently viable. Some are just more viable and it will stay that way if you keep having them overlap in roles and moments. You might as well ask now why I would play a Wizard if Druid has way better AoE damage when Wizards do get nerfed? Is it the CC? The self-buff? Not important enough in the current game. More damage = win. Set them apart if you want them to all be viable without overshadowing the other. It's not the dps contest, or at least it shouldn't be. Like, let's say Ability 1 deals 20% more damage. Ability 2 deals less damage but also has a debuff. You know, a debuff that's actually relevant because neither of these abilities oneshots enemies. They are not the same, but supposedly at least (roughly) balanced. Wizards should not have inferior damage to druids. Wizards should have better alpha damage, self buffs and actually useful conjured weapons. Druids should have heals, as well as better DoTs/sustained damage + shapeshift. You know, like it was in PoE1. I feel like I shouldn't be explaining such basic game design stuff. It has been proven multiple times in games like this where action have interval, that it's far better to kill and prevent damage than to allow damage and deal with it. Once your damage go above a certain point, you can trivialize the game combat. This was also the thing in PoE 1. I always play Druid and I like Hiravias. I got through 90% of the contents in PoE on PotD using 2 free-cast hailstorm at every fight. AoE so large and damage so high only the tankiest monster remain alive and you have to me in WM II for the lowbie to get to fight.. until I use the 2nd set of Hailstorm. Unless you make enemies strong enough to be worth CCing, there's no point to CCing. Right now, the only damage threat in enemy team above level 10 are wizard because they scale with levels while the fighters and rangers are still using low-level gear and never dealing more than 30 damage a hit unless they crit. There's no need to CC. There's no need for immortal buff. THere's no need for devotion. You drop the wizards, you win because every other type of enemies are both weak and braindead. The only other somewhat threatening one are the fampyr because they can charm and that's it.

I do get tired of repeating that In a Dps contest, you are either first or you are last. You brought up why play barbarian when you can play fighter for AoE. THat's the exact situation. All class is currently viable. Some are just more viable and it will stay that way if you keep having them overlap in roles and moments. You might as well ask now why I would play a Wizard if Druid has way better AoE damage when Wizards do get nerfed? Is it the CC? The self-buff? Not important enough in the current game. More damage = win. Set them apart if you want them to all be viable without overshadowing the other.

Obviously it's you that didn't give any concrete suggestion to make the game more challenging here. That's really a problem with you not reading anything to begin with. Figured why you left the game at chapter 3 because it has texts instead of easy numbers and pictures. I think it is not a problem only for me, many players didnt finished the last chapter because it is plain compared with the first two chapter. And I did read your points earlier. It is you that ignoring others points. We are talking about nerf the gamebreaking things here, never said to balance the game based on POTD, this game will be still easy without these gamebreaking one shot everybody things. And I say that yes, nerfs are needed but some are only game breaking because AIs cannot answer them. Immortal buffs are broken because AIs cannot remove them as this game scales the enemy level but do not give them new skills. Not a single ranger really use attacking skills and just basic your team until you get close enough for them to switch to dagger. 2k damage do needs nerf but not a direct damage nerf. THey need to either have low pen instead or low accuracy so they will shine in certain situation while failing in another. You nerf meteor, peopel go for salvo. You nerf Salvo, people drop Wizard and go play Druid for damage. You nerf Druid and what next? It goes on and on. Nothing is solved. This is why number nerfs shouldn't even be considered that much until PotD/Vet is fixed UNLESS it is that broken to the point there is no possible counter to it even if you buff the enemies. Imagine if AIs actually prioritize casters if they start casting big spells and actually interrupt them. The noise mechanic is there so work with that. Just give the level scaled ranger Twin shot after level 16 and see how fast they down your casters for just starting the fight with empowered meteor.

I'm not. It's basically frame a piece of filth and let him die to help a noble worker save his people or save an innocent man. Definitely one of the better morally ambiguous quests. Though admittedly it took me five seconds to make up my mind which was the correct option after having played through the quest so many times in the beta. **** Tamua. I wanted a solution without anyone dying and possibly improving the food situation for the village. The tribe is a bunch of savage so someone gotta die to "Appease the god" And according to the guides4gamers, it seems the quest is somewhat timed and you can just leave the seed there for a long time and it will be hidden again out of our grasp. Wait...do you means I return those fruit the seed is gone as well? Not only I framed an innocent people to die but the plan of planting fruit is ruin? It's a tribe full of idiots trying to appeal themselves to the Vailian because their Ranga wants to. Turns out the best solution is to just destroy the Adra. They will plan to move to a new location and the director ain't even that mad compared to Royal deadfire one.

Obviously it's you that didn't give any concrete suggestion to make the game more challenging here. That's really a problem with you not reading anything to begin with. Figured why you left the game at chapter 3 because it has texts instead of easy numbers and pictures.

It's getting to the point where it's more obvious that people like Dunehunter is just messing around since he doesn't really care much about the game being challenging to play, just challenging to think about playing.

Even after these things being nerfed you can still have fun in story mode thank you. Or how about the 1% just go mod their own games instead of assuming the backseat position of a developer. I'm even stomping PotD with Ranger anyway so none of these even matters to me. But of course the entitled Hardcore gamer will probably complain about it after 20 nerfs or so. Go play PoE 1 solo trial of iron on a naked ranger if the game isn't hard enough for you at the moment. Obsidian won't base their whole game direction all over the 1%. It's why they're taking time relooking at PotD instead of dropping the nerf hammers in a few months. Where did you get that 1% btw？ Look at PoE 1 Steam Achievement tracker and see how many bother to clear PotD, how many bother to solo and how many even bother to solo trial of iron with everything done. Only 0.6% even bother finishing PotD and 0.3% played it solo. The people trying to balance the game completely around "Hardest possible experience" is even less than 1% of the playerbase. Nah achievement doesn't mean anything. For us who back the game, we do expect a fun and challenging game instead of dull playthrough. The main plot of DF is already shorter than PoE 1, and if the combat is also not enjoyable, there is not much left to be played with. Btw I didn't finish PoE myself, because the chapter 3 of it is really boring. It's a tracker. Programmer don't work based on "Feeling". They use statistic. Statistic show that hardcore are very small amount of playerbase. There's a reason why they made the game more casual and it's not because "IT will make hardcore players mad" but it's because "Majority of the player like it that way". And you find Chapter 3 boring so clearly that level of PotD difficult is boring. Why bring it to PoE 2 then?

You do realize that "balancing around solo play" makes no sense in terms of bringing difficulty up. Solo play is more difficult, so balancing around difficult situation makes it easy for a party. Let's assume the game would indeed be balanced around solo play. Then the expectation would be the party play (which is a lot easier) would be ridiculously easy (like, 5 times easier). Fun thing is, game is too easy even solo now, let alone with a party. Currently it's already balanced around something like 0.5 character play. It's like that because enemies can only deal damage or soak damage. No other options. It's like going into a rock paper scissor fight where enemies can only play rock and paper. You need to give your enemies scissor, not take away your own scissor. You do realize that there's also internal balance, right? Why should I take barb when fighter is tankier and has better AoE? Why should I ever use spell X (e.g. concelhaut's corrosive skin) when spell Y (e.g. meteor shower) does 5x the damage and in AoE on the same level. I'm all for enemies getting smarter etc, but it won't fix internal balance and it won't fix inherently broken combos that just can't be fixed by smarter enemies. You could of course argue that all the stuff that does not do 2k damage should be buffed and then all enemies should be buffed on top, but that's just stat bloat. There's no real difference between these buffs and nerfs, except that nerfs are way easier to do (It's much less work to nerf the smaller number of outliers) and "feel bad" for some people. Then don't just do number gutting and add actual weaknesses. Fighters should be all rounder and barbarians should be better in a frenzy. There are ways to tackle balance beside "Gut that one person number". Maybe the damage is fine and maybe the ease of use isn't. Like how EMpowered Maelstorm actually has a flaw because enemy with dash can jump (if it somehow survives) into your team and the explosion will hurt you, Meteor can become a channeling and still deal damage and SAlvo should have less accuracy or less pen. Nerfing damage on a pure damage ability only cause people to go look for the higher damage options.

Even after these things being nerfed you can still have fun in story mode thank you. Or how about the 1% just go mod their own games instead of assuming the backseat position of a developer. I'm even stomping PotD with Ranger anyway so none of these even matters to me. But of course the entitled Hardcore gamer will probably complain about it after 20 nerfs or so. Go play PoE 1 solo trial of iron on a naked ranger if the game isn't hard enough for you at the moment. Obsidian won't base their whole game direction all over the 1%. It's why they're taking time relooking at PotD instead of dropping the nerf hammers in a few months. Where did you get that 1% btw？ Look at PoE 1 Steam Achievement tracker and see how many bother to clear PotD, how many bother to solo and how many even bother to solo trial of iron with everything done. Only 0.6% even bother finishing PotD and 0.3% played it solo. The people trying to balance the game completely around "Hardest possible experience" is even less than 1% of the playerbase.

You do realize that "balancing around solo play" makes no sense in terms of bringing difficulty up. Solo play is more difficult, so balancing around difficult situation makes it easy for a party. Let's assume the game would indeed be balanced around solo play. Then the expectation would be the party play (which is a lot easier) would be ridiculously easy (like, 5 times easier). Fun thing is, game is too easy even solo now, let alone with a party. Currently it's already balanced around something like 0.5 character play. It's like that because enemies can only deal damage or soak damage. No other options. It's like going into a rock paper scissor fight where enemies can only play rock and paper. You need to give your enemies scissor, not take away your own scissor.

I'm not. It's basically frame a piece of filth and let him die to help a noble worker save his people or save an innocent man. Definitely one of the better morally ambiguous quests. Though admittedly it took me five seconds to make up my mind which was the correct option after having played through the quest so many times in the beta. **** Tamua. I wanted a solution without anyone dying and possibly improving the food situation for the village. The tribe is a bunch of savage so someone gotta die to "Appease the god" And according to the guides4gamers, it seems the quest is somewhat timed and you can just leave the seed there for a long time and it will be hidden again out of our grasp.

Very hard. I would say the marketing team will disagree. No one makes a game to be super hard these day unless it is their selling points. Look at D:OS2. It went full casual and became supermegasuccessful. There's a reason why PoE2 remove all the tedious mechanic and made the game more casual. Sequel are known to drop in sale compared to the first unless it's a complete rebranding (Like God of War). It's better for them to just introduce the Berath Curse they mentioned if they want to make PotD super hard and still accessible to casuals.