Desmodeus

Well, Guilded Veil has quest with Whooping 17 RES check in one of the easiest early game quests

Bonus point if you make him lvl 2 and give him novice suffering

Well yeah, you need companions for caed nua adventures. If you are ok with that you can take companion but just keep him in caed nua. Game allows you to have purposly less then maxed party after all

So I keep hearing that penetrating shot is really bad on any build as -5 DR does not cover DPS loss from 10% penalty even against bosses like adra dragon. Does anyone made any tests about it? How much damage you gain or loose with penetrating shot on autoattacking implement builds?

I find his int ok for what he need to do. A bit higher int surely helped with jump distance, but it you focus on passives and modes he still works out all-right. I wish Maia has better Int. Looks like Kana stole all family brains xD

Also if you got caught in some nasty position(for example trying to sneak around enemies into more positive position) barrage->escape can allow you to catch enemy melee and salvage situation Well he does loose some deflection and hp by going swashbuckler so he is indeed squishier. But most likely reposite is the one thing that boost his appeal for engaged enemies. It ensure that Eder is hitting them even when he is not hitting them.

I dare to say, despite my really small experience in PoE2, in all cases answer to "is there a reason to go with single class over multiclass" is no. Multiclasses are just better in this game then single classes, even if we take into account power level loss. Generally abilities on high levels of trees just doesn't look as useful or strong as utility you get from second class. Even for Aloth for example spellblade, even if you don't want to use full attacks, will provide decent defensive passives, escape and smokebomb for boosted survivability, while fighter multiclass aloth will make much better use out of summoned melee weapons even though he can't choose devoted or conjurer as subclasses

Teleporting enemies are annoying but at the same time most of classes have their own ways out of engagements(and some of teleporting enemies doesn't even have an engagement to begin with) and also teleporting guys generally just teleport once per fight. Also if one enemy is slipped through engagement it not that big of a problem. One guy hitting your squishy can be offset by decent healing + maaaybe buff. If tank hold enoough enemies with engagements, so mage can not be flanked then he does his job

That is kinda the plan xD

I am thinking about Best defence dew to shaken on crit and sickened on crit effects to complement my roar, leap, morning chant and killers froze stiff

Depend on difficulty. What difficulty are you running at? Something like normal can be runned without much care of party composition. Are you asking about tanks or about shields? Engagement are insanely useful if your tank can make use of them so standart mmorpg idea of tank(ton of armor and hp, no offensive precence) isn't exactly working in PoE1 or 2. One thing is to have engagement but tank also need to make use out of them. So you either want your tank to deliver nasty debuffs to everyone engaged or do damage. For example in case of swashbuckler persistent distraction + guardian stance + overbearing guard ensures that even if enemy is not hitting swashbuckler himself, he is much less of a danger for other characters.

Quote: Not sure where essence idea went from. And even then it doesn't look like that Woedica needed Rymrgand help to grind souls up before consuming them So they just screwed up with deterioration variable? Couse Rymrgand working faster then merging occures. Also I am not sure why Berath can't take this balancing act onto herself. Isn't her entire point is to overlook wheel process?

So what about shields? Is The Beast Defence worth consideration or Cadhu Scalth has no competition?

TO be fair thats double edged sword. Allow unrestricted item usage - game pretty much becomes trivialized as you can buy over 9000 heal potions and just drink them till enemy empties out... Same with prebuffing. Allow prebuffing and prolong effect - player will not move anywhere until he has all his buffs precasted, have it restricted - some boss fights(like Alpine Dragon in PoE1) feels like crapshoot.

Good enough to potentially leave Wheel empty? xD

Also thats why concentration is very important in PoE2 and why stuff like Tactical Barrage/Whiteleaf is significally more useful and important in PoE2

No, really, what is the purpose of this guy inside Wheel system? After PoE1 I thought that However Seems counterproductive

Do I understand correctly that Cadhu Scalth with Luminous Balance is pretty much the best shield for tanking character? Or The Best defense with Sickening to Watch enchantment would be better here as it is additional debuff to spread around? Also what other items with triggerable effects are worth to be looking at?

Also this little thing can be cool on priest, especially since Priest offensive spells are often deal burn damage so good synergy with Scion of Flame. Also avaliable early, has great base damage and pure burn. A bit more of a Margan thing in term of visual so ymmv,

And people say rangers are only for martial focused builds xD Well in most cases having just one engagement isn't that big of a problem. At least you can get bonus acc against bosses... Wish it also gavea additional penetration but well...

to be fair in many cases this distance change would be irrelevant as apart from pike no other weapon apart from maybe spear make a lot of sense when attacking from back line. After all pike in real life was formation weapon. If you can't use weapon from the back row, it might as well be the same range. In theory something like spear could also use longer attack range so it could be used from the back, but it would have most likely made it very OP Was playing around with howler stats for that. Look like 8 is the minimum viable hp for tanking with 39 hp at lvl 1 and 51 at lvl 2. So I think something like 14-8-3-18-18-17 might work well for weapon and shield route(max PER to deliver that disables and max INT for long linger coupled with wide chant area and long frenzy. But damn 3 dex hurt

I thought maybe hatchet in second slot. It has -ACC on modal use and it has +deflection so might be good Not sure about stats though. In pillars barbarian could start with 4 con and still be on onelevel with 10 con rogue. For howler, well... 3 con is just 28 hp

Well I kinda want to try and run Sword and Broad howler and morningstar is twohanded Though damn this weapon looks cool. I mentioned long night in my plan... That's actually why I am planning troubadour here - so I will be able to constantly keep bonus engagement from knight AND late night effect on xD P.S. I spent too much time talking to Durance...

Anyway I actually managed to return to game, not even sure what it was. Strange stuff. Maybe even weather...

So, I found that dwarven sideckick guy who can be multiclassed as a barbarian and after looking on his ability trees I have this idea to make a second character as a Howler tank who works similar to @Boeroer Golden Dragon for PoE1 - tank, focused on making it as much pain in ass for enemy to fight against it as possible Thinking that he might be a -/troubadour. Though about Mage Slayer for barbarian as a subclass but penalty sounds extremely brutal. basic basic skills on which build will work: Barbaric Yell -> Barbaric Shout: makes enemy shaken and provide bonus engagement Frenzy -> Spirit Frenzy -> Spirit tornado: stagger enemies, deals additional aoe damage and leaves enemies terrified Weapon and shield + Thick skinned + One stand alone Leap - daze enemies on landing Wild sprint -> Ram sprint on chanter side The Silver Knights' Shields Broke both Arrow and Blade + The Long Night's Drink Birthed the Revenge of Morning: bonus engagement, bonus deflection and our kinda replacement for PoE1's Threatening Presence(as it do entirely different thing in PoE 2) At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff And Their Fear Followed Them into Foothills: Paralyze target and then frighten it Reny Daret's Ghost Spake, "I'll Catch you, Ben Fidel" Ben Fidel's Neck Was Exposed: mostly for deflection penalty, maybe even skip My Son, Do You See Your Sisters Across the Moor The Lights Danced across the Moor: For distracting attacks The Lover Cried out to the Beloved, "I am Yours!" Together They Slew Forth a River of Red - one more charm For proficiency I think Hatchet, club, flail and shields are best bet. Probably club the most important one as provide will penalty Will this work or am I forgetting something? Hope Psychic backlash IS actually once per encounter in PoE2 xD