Luckmann

So you're saying battle mage != tank mage? I'd disagree. The whole point of going melee mage is that you can tank AND deal damage at the same time. @TO: You can build a working battle mage without a shield. But I really wonder why.you don't want to take 1H+shield aswell? After all, you have a default 2 weapon sets. You can then freely switch weapons depending on what you're fighting. Chances are you will rely on 1H+shield much in early game, then, after reaching level 7 and getting access to the more powerful defense spells, you'll mostly use your two-handed weapons. Also, I think you are making a mistake in your concept: battle mages are not primarily about deflection (stacking deflection is still important, though), but about DR. Ghost shield, stone skin, bullwark against elements: all those spells buff your DR scores ad absurdum. Combined with a full plate or brigandine, you can pile up physical DR scores into the 30's (40's against elements). I wouldn't invest into Sword-and-Shield style for a battle mage either, simply because you won't use shields much in mid/late-game. Rather, invest into talents that work regardless of weapon choice: cautious attack, the passive +5 deflection, improved arcane veil (with the 1.05 change to veil, taking the improved veil makes you pretty much immune to deflection attacks), etc., then, when you have everything you need, invest into the +10 against status effect talents. Your insane elemental DR will take care of almost all spells; you only worry about status effects (remember that there's also a spell mirror ability. Use it and watch enemy spellcasters kill themselves!). Battle mages don't have a lot of useful talents to choose from, so you'll have some spare points at the end of the game. Remember that your weapon accuracy does not affect your spell accuracy. So weapon focus is only useful if you actually attack, instead of using spells. Honorable mention: the talent that reduces recovery when switching spellbooks. This is worth an investment! Build two different grimoires, one more on the defensive side, the other more on the damage/utility side, then switch after buffing up. Low duration spells should be on both grimoires, but stuff like spell mirror is perfect for the situational grimoire! Battles mages are pretty micro intense. I actually made 3 different grimoires for my battle mage; switching them mid-combat is nice to adapt to battle dynamics. I actually took the health recovery talent in utility at end game in my battlemage playthrough. Simply because there was nothing else that was interesting to choose and I found health to be the most problematic resource for this playstyle (good thing it was buffed in 1.05). Wait, what? They do? I'd say this is a bug, though, so I wouldn't specc into it because it might get fixed later on. I would say that it's a bug too, but it's been present since beta, and it's a small thing to fix, so unless it was fixed in 1.05, I don't think it'll ever be fixed.

This. And I cannot stress the bolded part enough. They need to be right on top of the trap and it is my experience that in order for a trap to trigger, a part of the opponent - and not just the selection circle - must pass through the verymost middle of the trap. Essentially, the entirety of the trap's area is meaningless, it is just a graphic representation of where the trap is placed. They need to pass through the trap itself at it's centre. Which imo is a huge problem sometimes and I've seen huge opponents, including drakes (which I'd actually be fine with, considering that they're flying.. but that's an assumption the game isn't making at the moment) and lurkers deftly avoiding traps that they are clearly walking on. It has nothing to do with accuracy, nor does a trap not trigger due to poor accuracy. It either triggers, attacks, and is consumed, or it doesn't.

Well that's one thing that is clearly never going to be addressed anyway. They've already acknowledged the issue and decided to work around it rather than on it, even to the point of compromising roleplay. I see no reason to think that the Attribute issues will ever be addressed.

- Sawyer-Sama! What is best in life? - To crush the exploits, to see badwrongfun driven before you, and hear the victory cries of muh balance.

It probably was supposed to be 20% (since 1.05 changed it to 20% and claims it now works as intended ) but in 1.03 & 1.04 it was 40% .. My testing with 1 older save show the "fix" isn't savegame retroactive ... Easy to test for your savegame - you only need to check combat log for 1 attack vs a marked prey target .. Ah, so it's not a nerf, it's just a fix. I haven't been able to check myself yet, because I'm still waiting for the patch.

Wasn't it always supposed to be 20%? Also, incredibly frustrating if it's not retroactive, because it means that I'll have to restart my ranger, if I can be bothered.

Actually, the Weapon and Shield style is pretty balanced in relation to Two-Weapon Style and Two-Handed Style. Weapon and Shield and Two-Weapon Style is practically mandatory for each of those styles, and the Two-Handed Style gets a flat, (boring) but hefty +15% damage, which is considerable. It is the One-Weapon Style that sucks dog buns... unless you're actually a tank and combine it with the Weapon and Shield Style as a tank, because for whatever nonsensical reason, they stack.

Never. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I mean the latter - but I'd expect the basic idea of a trap to be the same (it should either trigger and then roll for a hit/miss or roll for a hit/miss and then trigger). We can't set odd-shaped trap areas but why would the basic mechanics of a trap be different for party v. enemy traps? Because they are. There isn't some NPC setting those ahead of our party, whose Mechanics skill is going to determine whether or not Eder triggers it. Enemy traps are not the same as party traps. irrelevant - the traps could easily have an accuracy rating - determined by the devs rather than by the mechanics rating (and I think they do, as they miss Eder sometimes). There's no reason to have 2 different systems. Having the enemies trigger a player trap but having it also 'miss' wouldn't be a problem. Having it not go off at all, leaves the rest of us scratching our heads. That's because Eder makes the save. There's a difference between a trap not firing because the person setting it didn't have sufficient skill to make the trap dangerous and a trap firing but doing no damage because your party member has sufficient Reflex (Fortitude, Will, whatever) to avoid taking damage. Wish for whatever you want. I'm just trying to explain how it works. If you don't like it, that's not my problem. Again, this is not a thing. And I still have no idea why you'd think that it is.

Honestly though, when the developers themselves change the foundations of the characters, I see no reason why players shouldn't be allowed to do it themselves. Taking the change of Grieving Mother as an example, once you've settled that the attributes have no connection to the characterization of the CNPC:s, does it really matter whether it's the player or the developer doing the optimization? I would prefer it if we weren't in this situation at all, but Obsidian has settled for it, and thus it is very hard to argue against the player being able to freely re-assign every aspect of the CNPC:s with any degree of honesty. There's really no logical reason why the player shouldn't be allowed to make Edér a Intellect-based Wizard or make Kana a Dexterity-based flashmonster, at this point. Why would the visual representation be more important than the mechanical representation? Don't misunderstand me - I agree with you, on a fundamental level, but at this point, why would it matter to you what the portraits look like, just because they once fitted the characters? And yes, why not dialogue and personalities? It would be much harder to do, unreasonably so, but there's still a point to be made; why not?

PoE patch notes is the dumb that just keeps on dumbing.

Yes, look at the Mechanics entry on the character sheet. It's not like the information is hidden. +3 trap accuracy per point in Mechanics. Mechanics 0 = +0 trap accuracy. Mechanics 10 = +30 trap accuracy. Higher end traps have -25 Accuracy, so don't even bother trying to set one unless you're sporting at least Mechanics 8 (-1 accuracy) So even if you put a trap in a choke point, it won't trigger unless the person setting it has enough Mechanics to make the trap accurate enough to "hit" when stepped on. So if the trap 'misses' , then it just stays there until it hits?That seems like a weird solution to me - I've had Eder trigger traps that missed him, but never walk over a trap that didn't trigger. Enemies walk over my traps like they're not there (Set by Durance with 9 in mechanics), but his seals trigger ok (larger area maybe). That's been my experience. Especially early in the game when no one on my team has a ton of points in Mechanics yet. I'm not sure what "Eder trigger traps that missed him" means. Are you talking about traps you set or traps that you encounter? Not the same animal. Saying "that's my experience" is a bit disingenuous, considering that there's no factual basis for the claim. What you've seen is likely what the rest of us describes - traps not triggering - and you've attributed it to the Accuracy/miss mechanics.. why? There's no basis for that at all. In fact, I've never, ever, ever seen a trap Miss, nor seen a trap not trigger provided that an opponent moves through the middle of the trap. Unless the trap triggers, there is no roll at all, and if it triggers, you're notified. If a trap doesn't trigger, it's not a miss - it just hasn't triggered. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Accuracy of the trap or the Mechanics of the user.

This is, even if I place a trap in a doorway, odds are it won't trigger unless they are walking straight over it, which is far from guaranteed.

Mechanics *only* affects Accuracy for Traps (and Seals). There is no way you can fail to set a trap. Traps are always set (but only a maximum of 1 per character). Accuracy and whether or not something triggers is completely unrelated. We're talking specifically about the triggering of traps, not whether they graze, hit, miss or crit.

"Trap change"? Not your fault, unless I'm doing the same thing and it's my fault too. Perhaps we should sacrifice some goats.

It goes to find it's lost master.

Traps can be powerful but.. they're usually not. A good policy is to use traps where you find them, because the lower-level traps will quickly become utterly useless. Generally speaking, there's no reason to bother with them, as they're far from necessary - usually they won't affect the battle in any meaningful way. If you win, you didn't need traps, and if you're going to lose, the traps wouldn't have made a difference. Imo: The number of placeable traps should scale according to Mechanics, at a rate of 3-4 mechanics per trap. The bug that that makes Seals count as Traps must be fixed, because it means that if you place a seal, the trap is lost, and Mechanics should not affect Seals. If anything should, it's Lore. The trap triggers needs to be fixed; currently, monsters need to practically step squarely on top of the trap to trigger, and even well-placed traps often go untriggered throughout an entire fight.

No. All it does is invalidate Achievements, if that matters to you for some reason.

I've said it before and I can say it again; when it comes to the backer stuff, the only things that were done well were the Inns. Everything else, the memorials, the NPC:s, (most of?) the items, it's all condensed turd. I didn't consider the enemy parties, so.. yeah, they were probably done pretty well too. The fact that I didn't notice them as standing out is a really good thing.

You should be able to do it at level 9. Also... in case you don't mind a minor spoiler.

I wasn't even aware that you could move characters with the base console commands. Are you trying the "Jump" command or something?

Unnecessary? Maybe. There's a potential argument in there that it should be 1/3rd, not 1/4th, I think. Totally unnecessary? No. Ciphers are crazy in every single way. That being said, I think that they should stop staring themselves blind at class balances and take a look at actual content, instead, or go ahead and fix the Attribute Bonuses instead of constantly screwing with the CNPC:s in ways that makes no sense.

That's funny, because if it did, I would not.

Not a big deal? It's a huge deal. In a lot of games - which often gets rightfully criticised for it, too - level 1 or 2 spells are useless by the endgame. This is not remotely true in PoE. Low-level spells are useful right up until the end, and spellcasters getting blanket ranks of spellcasting as per-encounter at level 9 and 11 are unprecedented jumps in power incomparable to any other climb in relative staying power. Not only should the spellcasting classes not scale identically in this fashion (why on Earth would they? Wizards, Druids and Priests should be mechanically different) but anything that turns per-Rest into per-Encounter should be gradual, as should anything they can possibly get in exchange (such as specific per-encounter slots, domain spells, or other stuff). Also, you say "In fact (sic!), this more lr less only brings Wizards in line with..."; ignoring the fact that this applies to all spellcasting classes. Obviously, this is a bigger problem when we look at the Priests and Druids, because Wizards are still limited to a choice of 4 spells, whereas Druids and Priests unlock their entire 1st and 2nd rank spells. So let's not pretend that it's a balancing factor. It's an enormous and sudden jump in power for all spellcasters compared to everyone else, and it turns the gap between Wizards and Druids into an insurmountable gulch. Finally, provided that this schema continues past level 11, we're looking at the entire 3rd spell rank unlocked at level 13. And 4th-rank spells at level 15. That's 3 levels away from the current level cap, which is already laughably easy to reach, and which will no doubt be raised in expansions by at least 1-2 levels each.

If the name plates are yellow, create a black hole in your mind that swallows them up and pray to the satanic gods that Obsidian will one day release a patch that replaces them with generic NPC:s and fixes all the memorials.