morhilane

65 damage out of a max 21 weapon? That's more than x3.0 base damage not even counting DR, what was "up" on that rogue at the time?

You don't want to call it Armor Class, people will think it gets used in the hit resolution equation and wonder why there is more than one value too... Anyway, they didn't remove the second value just to put it back in, the system of two damage resistance stats was redundant and added a layer of complexity to the damage calculation. I personally think they should remove all the percentage based stuff and go with fixed values everywhere. Screw the pretty curves on the graphs I say.

I think the confusing part was having both the static (DT) and % (DR) based damage reduction at the same time. They decided to stick to static and renamed it DR because people who play PoE don't understand what DT means. Josh explained that DT came easily to the team because it is the name they used in Fallout New Vegas, but it would appear that people who play PoE didn't play FNV...

Core gameplay isn't going to change much anymore, although bug fixing and balancing can sometimes appears as major improvement even if everything still work the same.

Instead we have firearms and rods/scepter/wands.

Deflection and accuracy mitigate each others when it comes to the attributes and level increase (i.e. keep the to-hit window the same). Deflection is just as crucial as accuracy. The problem is outside of stats, it is much more easier to increase accuracy and damage output than it is to increase defenses and mitigate damage via talents, abilities, spells, gear, etc. There is a few more talents now that increase deflection though, but gear is limited to shields (as far as I saw and they give you an accuracy decrease, while barely anything that grant more accuracy affect your deflection).

My 2 cents to the problem of damage rolls. I see two issues: accuracy vs defenses favoring accuracy increase over defense ones because of the sliding window (it's always better to try to get more crits because the defense can't compensate) and all those damage multipliers everywhere that make pretty graphs don't necessarily turn into interesting gameplay results (but this is just math). The way I see it, PoE is simply doing what every other RPGs have been doing in the last few years: DPS race design. I think it's just a side effect of trying to response to certain player feedbacks though.

Fireball is 1D6 per caster level up to 10D6 in the IE games, but I don't think the engine roll different damage for all creatures hit by a single cast of the spell outside of resistance checks.

The Blizzard is so cold that it turn the humidity into smog...

It did in previous builds at least, I haven't checked in the latest one.

With the way they changed the talent selection, just focus on the pet and take the general melee talents at level up. Nothing is forcing you to select the ranged talents.

The Monk is going to kill everyone before the Cipher has the time to cast a second power...

It's not just a OSX problem, I had on Windows too. The shapeshift button was highlighted but my character never shapeshifted. Didn't even do a load/save. just plain create new character, level up to 5 and face off against Medreth and his goons.

Wish they would have tried something more unique than just a pet. Hopefully they do something else to make it more interesting. I do agree with the others who said it was disappointing that the ranger is pigeon holed as a class. The health sharing is pretty unique actually. Also, how can the Ranger be pigeon holed if, by BB players's comment in this very thread, sword&board ranger and pet is effective and fun to play?

In the PoE setting, Rangers are warriors of the woodlands and master of the hunt and ranged weapons that are soul bonded to an animal. At least, that's how they were described in their Kickstarter update.

At level 4, +12% is about being able to get one more graze from a fast small weapon if you are wearing good armor. Maybe Constitution should give DR at this point.

Guess I missed that. :/ Priest has 25 in the current build. I think the Wizard does too, but I didn't validate by making one.

The Ranger already has a few abilities to increase its accuracy in a fight. I don't think they need more of them. I personally believe they just need to adjust the rate of attack of the pet and their base damage output along with fixing the bugs the class has. Some of the pets don't attack often enough (the fast wolf isn't very fast, I think the stag attack more often than it does) and they need various damage type, because everything doing piercing damage is just crap...especially in the BB where half the mobs have high DR against it.

You are right, they seem to have changed it this build. In fact, it seems to have changed for most classes...

I think you mean powers and not invocations. I though you were talking about the Chanter at first. Barbarian 5 deflection is killing them too fast. They get crit to death and no amount of health/endurance is going to save them, especially when one beetle crit can take half your endurance away...

True, but there's still such a thing as "really not good enough." I compared a ranger with ranged rogue and ranged fighter builds. Both of the latter had significantly higher damage output, and since damage is the only thing the ranger does, that's... not good. At the very least the dedicated ranged class should be more lethal with a bow than melee classes rebuilt for range. It was also much higher-maintenance because I had to baby the animal companion. Comparison protocol: Medreth to get the war bow, ranged build pumping Mig, Per, Dex and dumping Con, taking Weapon Focus: Adventurer and the best ranged talents available AFAICT, then dragon egg quest, then fight through drakes to get back to Dyrford. Then look at statistics. Rogue and fighter are on par with each other, more or less, ranger is a ways behind both. Then, to confirm, I did another ranger, named him Park, equipped BB Rogue with a war bow (Ranger still got Medreth's superior one) and gave her Penetrating Shot on levelup. BB Rogue beat Ranger Park in damage output by a significant margin, and she wasn't even built ground-up for it. PJ, does the stat sheet for the Ranger take the pet damage into consideration? Because by himself only the Ranger was never supposed to beat the Rogue's damage output. Rogue was always said to be the best damage dealer anyway.

Spells also use accuracy and can miss, grazes, hit and crit like weapon attacks, so it's not all about buffing the wand arm.

They were presented as DPS and that is what they are, especially once you get the pet synergy going. Think of them as nature themed rogues that comes with two parts: one ranged and one melee. The pets are not designed to tank, they are designed to increase the Ranger's contribution to damage. That's all well and good in theory, but when they're getting destroyed repeatedly because the companion cannot weather the melee it's supposed to be engaged in... Rogues can't really tank, but they also manage to stay up in the front line. With the range, as soon as the pet engages stamina starts plunging rather quickly. I personally never had that problem and I don't use the bear. My rogue always lose more health than my ranger (well the pet) do. Just to check. I made a Ranger with a wolf, the wolf has 54 Deflection while BB Rogue only has 36. Technically, the wolf shouldn't get hit as hard as the rogue.

Why would a Skaenite want to resolve that quest exactly? They should be approving and let them be.

Dots have been bugged since the very first BB. When one get fixed, two more become broken (less or more).