Ymarsakar

The accuracy on the priest aoe hazards are pretty high. Making the priest probably the second or thirdish best cc class.

Pretty much agree, although Durance's low dex will hurt him at level 9 when he needs to bump out as many spells as he can. Although the "quadratic wizard" thing applies to all these standard ish casters at that level and beyond.

"Did someone pay you for this ? You are sure they are working hard ?" No, you're not paying Torm for him to help you. And yes, it does look like Torm is working hard to help someone with your attitude. As for the patches, White March is new content and is a little unstable. 1.06 game is still pretty solid.

Rogue is still king of single target dps, but if you add up the dps from twinned arrows, the attack speed buffs, the pet, and the driving flight... well, it can get pretty large in total for the ranger. The rogue's initial DPS is high because of some of the backstabs, talents, stealth sneak attacks, etc. The endurance comes from the basic sneak attack though. Raw damage from wounds is also pretty good. Ranger is more endurance based, in that it just keeps outputting the hurt cause it's not based on abilities, per encounter or per rest as much. If you can keep the pet alive using a paladin or buff, Itumaak has a good attack rate. Once the ranger has stunning shots, it means that the entire party's dps against that target goes up as well. And those shots are forever so long as you have a target, your ranger is alive, and your pet is alive attacking the ranger's target. The rogue runs out of cc when his abilities go bye bye. The critical build rogue using st Rum or Tall grass, though, probably compensates for that issue. That pet weapon switch thing sounds like a bug. Because there's no normal interface for it.

I'm just making a general comment because other people were talking about the pots, I wasn't making a recommendation about the paladin.

You're welcome.

The mirrored images potion function almost exactly like the wizard spell. So every hit you lose some deflection but not everything. As for pots, I think they limited it now so you can only use it in combat. There's also a cloak that allows you to cast mirrored images. Pretty good for tanks or anybody else that doesn't like to get hit.

Between what?

Funny you should ask this, since I did some experimental runs recently about that. Action speed affects the number of frames for each animation. Recovery animation, reloading animation, weapon attack animation. Attack speed and recovery on armor, normally just affects the recovery animation cycle, the gap between attack animations. From data, I concluded that dexterity noticeably affects situations where the attack animation and the reload animation constitutes a significant number of seconds for the entire cycle. Meaning spells with longer than standard cast speed and weapons that attack a lot therefore use more attack animations. Also those weapons that need reloading. The number on the dex itself is pretty accurate for how many more attacks you would get. So 20% on dex would actually get you about 1/5th extra attack for any number of weapons. That seems to be stable no matter what weapon you are using or what armor you are using.

The ranger and the wizard can stack up to near 100% attack speed, and when naked you should see what happens when their weapons start hitting. But I think the wizard with citzal's lance aoe is probably closest to the Human fireball barbarian aoe.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80015-all-poe-random-item-day-checklist/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1733106 This can be used to plan the loot a little bit, although I wouldn't try to micro this for every day. That's not fun if you ask me. But it's a good idea to see what kind of random loot you might get from the early levels, if you really wanted to plan it like that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844 Click on chanter to the right. Video has more explanation, from same author, concerning the late game picks.

DPS will need weapons as a high priority. The White Spire estoc is pretty good, especially as it debuffs the enemy. Not sure where I got it, though. Many weapons can be bought at Dyrford stores and the Copperlane store in Big City 1. Expensive, but can be pretty good if you want to build a build around just that weapon. Other than the weapons that drop in Caed Nua and some other places, you won't be able to easily get an early game build out. Most of your issues will be fixed early game because the equipment is... fixed and also random, thus somewhat unpredictable. But generally the best stuff is at the stores I mentioned, so take a look at them and see what you can afford. The prone on crit Tall grass pike and the two handed swords are some of the best weapons in the game when upgraded. And are especially useful for certain rogue or paladin or dps builds. Lead Spitter is available from a quest from Dyrford, that covers the blunderbuss line well up until you can upgrade to the other special blunderbuss. The loot for the rings and cloaks of protection should drop from special hidden containers, on a rotating loot check with different stuff every game day. So for tanks you generally want the +9 ring or the +9 bracer for deflection. For DPS, once you find the gloves of accuracy or the bracers of accuracy, it can substantially increase the dps of your ranged or melee characters. For boots, there's particularly useful self healing one after you do a few quests at big city 1 for Crucible Knights. Shod in Faith, put that on your weaker party members or on your tanks and they won't need as much healing per encounter.

Why not use the potion of alacrity? The same as the third level wizard spell.

Class with high dps and cc is the cipher, hands down. Second option is the ranger. The ranger has the highest range for their dps, giving them some pull options and safety options. Cipher is a few meters behind the main battle line, and rogues are generally very close to the main line if not behind the enemy's main line. As mentioned before, the cipher's dps equals the rogue, once you get a certain spell rotation in for the cipher, generally consisting of the dual use of antipathetic, echo, and mental paralysis.

We Toki axe prones on crit. That's not generally used for dual wielders and people looking for the pike range (outside of the rogue 20% hit to crit), but for you it's probably a good fit.

The NPC stats can be changed though. What absolutely can't be changed is the race/gender/culture of the companion npcs. The rebalanced classes are very powerful now, and my primary issue in potd is finding ways to de level and downgrade the party's power, not using scrolls and pots help but not enough. This is mostly around Act 2 and 3 though, so there's probably that big gap between levels. But it's also because of how many stats in POTD got nerfed down besides the special battles.

Yea, rangers are one of the top dps classes now because of the rebalance. Very good cc with barbed trap as well, long lasting. The ability to instantly switch targets and apply damage, makes them superior to rogues in my view, since less micro and more target focusing. The pet also serves as a backup melee attacker/defender to plug gaps.

Ranged and melee attack speeds are selective criteria, meaning they are weaker than normal attack speed because they are only intended to affect one over the other. To see an example of melee attack speed, I think the rogue's modal used to have it.

A rogue like paladin, says the gamer, here's my character sheet, take it or leave it. One of the minuses of the way Obsidian designs narrative heavy games is that they like to assume you don't have companions for quests, so unlike Planescape Torment and Shadowrun trilogy, your companions don't really do much aiding in your quests. So they're combat companions but story line wise, the designer assumes you may have killed them or ignored them in a play through, so they can't add Aloth to some X quest, other than Aloth's own quest. This ties in with the large numbers of initial builds for the main, as they can't plan specifically for that either, since they don't know what you're going to pick. Class, culture, etc. They can't make special content for everything. Shadowrun gets around this a little by setting up a very strong backstory and role playing elements for the main character, using the dialogue tied to your abilities to role certain archetypes. That way no matter what class or race you pick, some things are set in stone, in order to present a role you can play through, rather than using your own imagination to make up the startup. Planescape Torment took a very narrow view of narration and just basically plugged you into an existing class/race/person and you just went on your way exploring different personalities and historical connections with your buddies. Torment is much closer to the Japanese visual novels popular in some select Western circles, in that part of the narrative fun is seeing what the writers come up with. Freedom of choice is generally reserved for simulators, not linear stories written by authors. Western RPG makers come from the table top genre, partially, so to them, making up stories is the job of the character's player, not the DM or writers. You create your own character, his backstory, and whatever RP elements you do is up to you, and the Dm merely changes the plot and fights to adjust to that. That's why many of these DnD type CRPGs allow you to pick so many options at the start. Whereas in more linear stories like visual novels or Planescape Torment, you build the entirety of your role play through in game decisions and atmosphere, a set of choices pre written for you by the DM/Author/God watcher. The crit path in Pillar did have some small innovations in choice, but it's difficult to tie that in with the rest of the game given the level of freedom the designers wanted to get out of it first. For example, you could pick your backstory with X by choosing some options in dialogue, but those aren't explained much nor do they tie in with the character creation/abilities. So mechanically, it feels initially very similar to the disposition and dialogue systems, where the impact isn't readily clear and whatever role play is available is limited. The player doesn't know about it ahead of time so they didn't make the character up with that in mind, and the player doesn't see enough of the consequences of that dialogue choice to feel very stuck to it mechanically in game. It's not like picking one wizard spell over another, which has continuous mechanical effects from there on in. Baldur's Gate, my favorite npc was probably Imoen, because she was in the game at the start so the writers started writing some interesting stuff for her later on. And the player could easily get attached through the trilogy if they were with her for so long it became a kind of meta story.

The Kind Wayfarer is so kind that when he sweeps his weapon across the field, the heads of his enemies fall in one stroke, a merciful act which inspires and encourages his fellows, raising their endurance. When an enemy non human is suffering, give it the Merciful Final blow and end its torment.

What happens when driving flight is used with twinned arrows?

Faith and conviction is a passive buff that paladins get due to their zealous/fanatic beliefs. What they believe in, changes depending on the role play and maybe order. Dispositions are thus a way for the main paladin character to do more role playing by selecting dialogue that goes with his order's preferred style. As a reward, the player is then awarded more points in his passive buff as a result. That's the general explanation of why the mechanics are the way they are, at least. For a background on the class and how it fits into the game lore, read this. Blunderbuss cipher with the DR bypass talent on. Your might or per is probably too low to go through the armor of those knights using that weapon, so get a weapon with a higher base damage or with more DR. War bows don't have dr bypass, but stilettos and guns do.

Lore scrolls are pretty op, it's best to leave that stuff out of class balance talk.