NotDumbEnough

You can also have your companions put on the robe and lie to the imps and talk to Arkemyr. They each have their own lines, Aloth does a pretty good impression when talking to the upstairs imp.

If you're not keen on invisibility cheese with assassin/tactician, keep in mind the assassin has a smoke bomb ability that distracts in a fairly large radius. It's nice in that it rolls against reflex too, and with +25 acc from stealth you should hit most enemies that aren't resistant. That said, take care not to hit your own teammates.

Too powerful I think. Cat form's weapons are on par with monk fists but require no investment and are equally good as a multiclass. And though you lose special properties from your armor when you transform, the spiritshift hide is also really good (base 8 AR, , no recovery penalty). There kind of needs to be a limited duration. I do like the balance polishing mod in that it makes wildstrike frenzy trigger on crit instead of kill, so even against megabosses a single class druid can potentially stay in spiritshift form permanently.

I tried it with Kind Wayfarer. Something that I didn't notice before is that you don't need high CON and RES to kill everything with Sacred Immolation: the damage over time can be suppressed just like any other debuff as long as there's a friendly priest or paladin around. The only downside is that you're not allowed to recast the ability while you still have the debuff on you, even if the actual damage pulses have long ended. Other than that I still don't feel the exhortations are worth using. Chanters and Priests are just so much more efficient at doing that.

Yes, I think I tried Screaming Souls once in the big tavern fight on Splintered Reef. Was very disappointed it didn't blow the room up, not sure it hits more than one vessel.

If you want to spam Shred spells for single target damage under 1000 cuts Silent Scream is probably the best option after you have used antipathetic field if possible. Even a Daze on a resistant foe is very useful. The interrupt is obviously also very good. My Ascendant repertoire for late game is basically Antipathetic Field, Silent Scream, Amplified Wave, Disintegration, Ancestor's Memory, Time Parasite, Driving Echoes/1000 Cuts (both are for boss fights, only one is really necessary imo). Everything else is more or less extraneous since these spells allow you to deal with pretty much everything in the game (against crush immune bog oozes just Disintegrate them all). Maybe Detonate for megaboss fights but that's about it. I take passive abilities with all my other skill points where possible.

I'd rather just single-class the Ascendant, since you aren't really benefiting from sneak attack bonuses from the Streetfighter, and cast even faster due to Time Parasite stacking. Though I also prefer Amplified Wave, as with maxed out action speed you literally cast faster than the enemy can get back up. I quit my Ascendant playthrough relatively early due to how broken and boring it was, though. It doesn't matter what you're fighting, you start with Thunderous Report, spam Time Parasite till you get 8 stacks, then Amplified Wave till everything is dead. At most you may want a Resolute/Courageous inspiration from a teammate to prevent interrupts during the starting sequence. For megaboss fights you can spam Brilliant inspirations and the +8 pen buff.

Priests do come off as boring buffbots for the first few power levels but start ramping up in offensive capabilities significantly by PL6 with Pillar of Holy Fire. They are the best source of offense-oriented buffs (you compared them with Druids but Druids can really only provide healing and some minor defensive buffs. I suspect that you are trying to heal with Priests which they are not actually too great at) with Devotions for the Faithful and Dire Blessing. A very important tip if you are playing a support-oriented priest: pump Stealth really high. Any ability that doesn't affect enemies (like Dire Blessing or Litany for the Soul) do not break stealth and benefit from almost no recovery while stealthed. This means you can cast these spells about twice as fast or more. The basic idea of a Priest in terms of gameplay is to drop all your buffs first and when your stats are sky high start nuking the enemy. The Symbol spells at PL8 are arguably the strongest damage spells in the game as they don't have friendly fire. If you have met Tekehu yet you'll notice that he gets a no friendly fire version of Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar at PL9 (that is he can only cast it once per battle). Your Symbol spells hit much much harder and you get two casts of them. It's pretty insane. If you want to diversify away from fire damage Priest of Berath is good with lots of corrode damage (and indeed one of the few classes in the game that can deal heavy amounts of corrode damage. Corrode damage is quite rare imo). Keep in mind there are quite a few fire immune enemies in the game.

Might be useful for taking out Rust super early as he is an example of a lone enemy (but overleveled to compensate). He does have super high reflex defense though, so it might take a long time.

Thanks for the changes. Some feedback: Vielo Vidorio does not play well with the AI system. Sometimes it resets to flames of devotion (unupgraded) in the AI tree after reloading the game. Sometimes you simply cannot set it as an option at all. I enjoy the changes to Barring Death's Door. In particular, my glass cannon characters can no longer function as a pseudo-tank simply by attracting enemy fire and watching them waste their efforts on a target they can't kill. Healing Chain in its current state feels a bit weak. The total healing amount is not that much of an improvement over Lay on Hands by the time you reach PL 8 (especially given it costs more zeal), but it acts much slower. 3 Focus/6s for Great Soul on Ciphers seems a bit weak, and I usually do not bother taking it. I personally feel the "on KO" abilities (Providence, Vengeful Defeat, fighter's self revive) are among the most useless in the game as getting knocked out tends to happen less at higher levels, at least for me (HP tends to scale faster than most damage sources). While you have buffed Vengeful Defeat and Providence, I think it would be cool if it had a change similar to Barring Death's Door, so that instead something happens when you are near death. Great mod.

Nope, just fists and Tuotilo's Palm. Looks like this:

If you want the highest possible damage in melee, single class monks are good (though they are buggy, I had a nasty bug where Xoti would punch herself and get KO'd with Whispers of the Wind), and Streetfighter multiclasses are good. At level 15 or so, my Soulblade-Streetfighter multiclass could start one-shotting miniboss enemies (e.g. Fyrgist, a high level captain) with a high focus Soul Annihilation+Necrotic Lance on PotD upscaled. Great fun. It was a glass cannon build, but you dealt so much damage that you could kill almost everything within the duration of 2 back to back Barring Death's Doors. Yes, that is 480 damage right there, with some damage over time tacked on, though he obviously died before it could take effect.

I think the main downside of a single class Paladin is your inability to deal with fire resistant foes. And since there are quite a few enemies that are even immune or heal from fire damage, it feels exceptionally bad to have a fire damage focused MC. Same issue with Priest of Magran. It's one of the few gripes I have with PoE2: even something crazy like 30AR so that you always underpen would be fine. Straight up immunity to a certain form of damage can feel really bad, especially for your first play through.

Brilliant on a Skald is quite nice due to their higher efficiency in using phrases. With Brilliant you can just spam low level invocations over and over at a much faster rate. It was very noticeable on my Tactician/Skald, though I found that it severely lacked in single target damage.

On my Priest of Wael playthrough I remember talking back to Rymrgand during the failed experiment, but not so much that he would kill me via dialogue. Later I started Beast of Winter, and when I tried to go through the portal Rymrgand asked me if I was the same **** as before. There was a Priest of Wael unique shady/clever dialogue option along the lines of "You must have confused me with someone else." to which Rymrgand's reply is basically "Nice try" and another instadeath via dialogue. Also if your character has minor intercession, all the priest classes have unique descriptions of just what a minor intercession is if you use it after contacting a plagued ship. For Wael, everyone aboard the ship blacks out and mysteriously wakes up back at their post some time later.

I feel that Pallegina would benefit more from additional INT for both her chanter and paladin abilities. A more sneaky way to make her stand out more might be to improve the avian godlike effects of the heart chime amulet you get from her personal quest. Aloth actually gets a permanent bonus from his personal quest resolution which makes him stand out. Eder does too, but arguably it is less impressive (5 will/1 resolve). For sidekicks, Vatnir needs a minor buff to his godlike racial ability and/or a rogue subclass rather than minor attribute boosts, imo (Rogue/Priest Vatnir feels weird and out of place).

Yeah. It's always been a thing and Fassina is apparently a spirit too.

I do think that Ciphers need some babysitting as they are the squishiest class in the game. The Wizard is also fairly fragile but makes up for it with various defensive spells; Ciphers don't really have much outside of Borrowed Instinct and the ability that steals AR from an enemy. A secondary issue is that they have to land (and have enough PEN on) both their attacks and spells to be particularly useful (martial classes really only have to land their attacks, and casters really only have to land their spells, so ciphers have to jump through more hoops). That said, you're not going to find Brilliant on any other class, and charm/dominate are both incredibly powerful.

Are you sure about that? Great Maelstrom is goofy in that it has two components keyworded differently. For example, Scion of Flame only affects the initial damage, and not the subsequent tick damage, which does not seem to be keyworded fire.

Personally I found the first game much harder. Due to afflictions severely reducing defenses (and petrify even doubling damage intake), I had party members get stunlocked or instantly vaporized A LOT on my first play-through. Adragans were particularly deadly if you didn't prepare a bit in advance due to having both Relentless Storm and their petrify. I've never found PoE2 super difficult. There are a lot lot lot of quests on Neketaka which have no combat whatsoever if you don't intentionally pick a fight. I think you can comfortably reach level 9 without much fighting and it makes the rest of the game easy.

Not an RPG, but I strongly remember playing FTL and noting that the writing was really good. It's not a narrative-driven game, but it's much better than what you expect out of the average roguelike. Lo and behold, I check the credits and Avellone is a guest writer.

I don't think it was Avellone's problem though. Most of your "Watcher vision" sequences are overwrought in general, so it was probably a team decision. Dean Domino in FO:NV, also written by him, was perfectly fine. Cheeky, and a nasty piece of work like Durance, but usually gets to the point in his dialogue.

Durance isn't "forgotten". It's just that the gods don't visually see people like normal mortals do, they identify them based on their souls. Durance had his soul damaged in the process of making the bomb, so he's invisible to the gods. Which is a good thing, because he really can't keep his mouth shut.

I've definitely had fights as a beckoner where I simply started with max phrases. I believe it has something to do with your power level/character level but I can't prove it. Also note that in shipboard fights characters are already chanting while the cutscene at the start plays, so you start with an extra phrase.

Nah it's Grieving Mother. If you bring Ydwin, she'll also comment that she's heard of powerful ciphers having such abilities.