WHW

Basically, the title. I'm in a mood to play a Transmuter Specialist Wizard, but last time I checked Form of Fearsome Brute was basically a dead ability and while Wizard is already strong, I would love a mod that either makes Form interesting or replaces it with something different, even if it is a cycle of transmuter-fitting spells from other classes (like the Decay cycle from Druid, allowing me to do a "Necromancer").

This mod breathed some life into Deadfire for me, kudos to you! Any chance for some extra love for Psion? I feel the subclass lacks "something similar" to Soul Whip upgrades. Maybe an upgrade to the Soul Mind making it more attractive as a solo class? I would love to play Psion single-classed, but their focus regen is so piddly I caught myself just spamming low level spells as anything else would take years to charge. Perhaps a perk that quickly refunds some cost of your last cast? Or, if we are to embrace the spamming, maybe some Power Level boosts for lower power level abilities. On companion front, I would love ability to make Serafen a Furyshaper!

My biggest problem with Wizard Subclasses is that they offer you a very specific pitch -a promise of a certain experience - and then, often double digits hours into the game, you realize that not only they don't deliver at the start, but that they *won't deliver for the rest of your playthrough*. My first character was a Conjurer, and I made the mistake of not reading the entire spell list before getting into the game. My experience was painful, annoying and I was really irritated each time I found a piece of itemization that catered towards Evocation Wizard - Peter the Cat, Ninagauth's Teachings, Fire boosting items and pets... Until about level 17, I've felt like I was playing a poorly designed modded subclass that wasn't in the original game, and thus the game didn't acknowledge it with proper spell selection and itemization. What changed post level 17? I quit and made a generalist Wizard . So that's my 2 cents here. Wizard Subclasses bait you into expecting something that they never deliver, and that bait can be really frustrating in 60+ hours game.

For the lack of better word, where should I look if I wanted to explore "oriental" (east-asian) themes in Eora?

Are there any druids (both individuals and groups) that defy the traditional approach of "druid = nature gets special treatment/nature should be worshipped"? What about druids that study natural energies as a form of "science", hoping to understand it and exploit it for the needs of Kith?

Hm. I actually really liked the narrator and was somewhat dissapointed that we didn't get to hear her more often.

Nope. Itemization pretty much ignores non-Fire non Evokers and non Illusionists as far as Wizards go. Also, Power Level doesn't really interact with Summon Weapon spells - it only gives you some token duration increase.

Twilight Druid. Lose shapeshift and Elemental spells, gain +2 power level towards Rot spells and generate a small aoe pulse of healing over time each time your Decay spell kills something. Fluff wise, it's a druid that focuses on the very instant of death, so it can be fully optimized for rebirth and nothing is wasted. EDIT: A few variants: a) replace Shapeshift with "Rebirth at Sunrise" and "Death At Sunset" abilities. Death At Sunset is a passive buffing your Decay spells; Rebirth at Sunrise gets charged by killing stuff with Decay spells and allows you to create a Moonwell-like effect of healing. b) Perhaps instead of flatly buffing Rot spells power level, "Death At Sunset" should make these spells attack Will if it is a weaker save, akin to that Barbarian perk that changes deflection to Fort when attacking with weapons. c) Perhaps Twilight Druid should some mechanic around health levels - the closer target is to death, the more powerful Decay and Rejuvenation spells become. Why? Because I love Druid as a full caster, don't really care about Spiritshifting, and absolutely adore the Decay theme for a druid.

I'm interested in the direction Cipher is going. I played Cipher in PoE1 because I didn't like managing per rest resources, so being able to build up but then go all out was pretty fun. In PoE2, I felt like the mechanic didn't quite work, simply because the breaks between impactful casts tend to be too big - by the time you make an "impact move", rest of your team is probably halfway through their resource pool. I do like the idea of Cipher having fast casts and minimal recovery time, in exchange for the drawback of having to autoattack between casts. It just feels like they are taxed for something that was an advantage in previous game, but is neutral/disadvantageous in per-encounter world of PoE2.

They definitely existed, and some of them changed based on your relationship with the companion.

Would using Whispers of the Endless Paths drop Deflection to the point where you wouldn't be able to Riposte Tank reliably? I was eyeballing Trickster before for it, and after the buff, I'm really interested in checking if it works.

I'm playing a Conjurer right now, and while I'm having a lot of fun with it, I'm aware that I could be doing identical stuff as a generalist, because nothing I do is actually influenced by Power Level in a meaningful (other than "extra duration to already encounter-long spells") way. There are some fun strategies you can use, like using a summon weapon spell, and then casting a phantom spell, spawning a phantom that copies your summoned stuff - I'm excited to see how strong it will be with the Blackbow - you probably can do something as good, if not better, using just a strong unique like The Red Hand or Frostseeker. The "weapon spell" I understand the least is probably Concelhaut's Draining Touch. It's a 3s cast 4s recovery spell that gives you one use of a medicore (about one shot of kalkoth, i feel?) damage weapon that heals you and has a chance to weaken the target, and then puts you again into recovery for 4s. I love the concept of the spell, but I have very hard time finding a reason to cast it over Kalkoths, using a normal weapon, using any other lvl3 spell, or even just using Parasitic Staff.

Best way to use Kalkoths at the moment is to be a martial class and just spend rest of your life crafting Kalkoth Scrolls. Rogue, Barbarian, Ranger or even Cipher use Blights much, much more effectively than a dedicated, single classed Conjurer.

Adding unique enhancements mirroring upgrading a normal unique, which are unlocked as you advance in power levels, would make them definitely fun and exciting to level up .

I'm the kind of a person that prefers consistent but weaker effects that X% but stronger effects. Just helps my mental hygiene. Still, for stuff like Victorious Triumph, I wouldn't mind if the game used pseudo randomness where the longer you go without a given event occurring, higher it's chance to trigger, so that you would *always* get it to trigger it at least once every 4 kills. These kinds of mechanics also tend to work the other way, too, making an event increasingly less likely to happen after happening, so the chance of getting something twice in a row is much lower. Helps a lot with making stuff like new Victorious Triumph feel consistent and impactful.