Haplok

Slave town, Crookspur, beach merchant has the best scimitar (stealable, also has a great plate armor). Lots of quality weapons in the pirate Town Dunnage (rapier, estoc, flail, 2h battleaxe). A nice spear in Sayuka.

Yes, pistols and blunderbusses. The former provide good single target damage, the latter are multi hit weapons which synergize with hit response/stacking effects, such as wizard Combusting Wounds or druid/item Avenging Storm. Also this category includes great aoe reflex based mortars. Crossbows... Can't say much about them. They are usable I suppose. Not very exciting though and outshined by firearms IMO.

But then you can pretty much forget about Lay on Hands. I guess you could rely on pots for healing.

How do dual gunpowder weapons work? I recall that in PoE 1 I avoided them because of hearing about massive reload times. Is that no longer the case in PoE 2? It's a bit jarring that so many folks recommend gunpowder weapons in PoE 2 when they were shunned in PoE 1 - except as a alpha strike tool in some weapons switch scheme.Well you attack/reload faster with duals. More importantly, abilities which are Full Attack shoot both weapons in quick succession and proceed to only reload the offhand gun. Martial classes such as rogues can and should spam cheap full attack abilities (such as Crippling Strike). With duals that's 2 chances to debuff/Dot the enemy at the cost of 1 attack. Also if the enemy wasn't susceptible to sneak attacks before, after the debilitating shot from the first hand he usually is prepped to eat sneak damage from the second shot. Plus dual hand mortar aoe blunderbusses (from Serafen and his quest) are really potent VS whole groups and enemies with not so great reflex.

Depends on the boss I guess. But I think you want about 15 sometimes and even 18 when buffed. But you have quite many tools: armor debuffs (maces, chanter, also wizard, cipher and fighter but those are more limited), priest buffs, berserker frenzy, food bonuses, weapon pen modals.

... And +50% Heating up sneak bonus.

... Or monks. Whispers of the Wind with dual mortars should be nuts. Pure rogues would work too.

So in 3.0 beta this problem still seems to persist. I'm loosing Flurry of Blows or other starting abilities I've upgraded later. Any chance for a fix?

One for Speed and Sneak Bonus (50% each). Both for additional 100% Crit damage bonus. But even without the crit bonus, a Streetfighter is quite the performer.

Blooded and/OR Flanked.

Well, you need to raise Mechanics on several characters to do it at that level (one should put most points in it). Using Thief's Putty also helps.

Weren't you planning for Gift of the Machine and Skaen's Blood Pool bonuses? If so, an act of mercy, even misguided, is rather minor, no?

Indeed. But consumable usage is a cost and a choice. One I usually don't make. I cringe even more thinking about a certain helmet, which is available immediately on your arrival in the main hub.

Fighters (and their multis) get A LOT more durable when they get Unbending. It's not 100% risk-proof but...

Looses access to PL VIII and IX invocations though...

Eh, I'm not thrilled about new pet abilities, although maybe they were needed at a high level. Buffed they will be better.. but do I want to spend Bond for that? They still won't become killing machines. I would prefer a passive effect (though it woulds probably need to be much weaker). Heartseeker is nice, sure, but it's ranged only, primarily suited for two-handed ranged weapons and only available to pure rangers. Not necessarily a bad thing, but personally I don't plan to play any pure classes. Now pure rangers have 3 pretty exciting skills... I'm never gonna use: Whirling Strikes, Twin Shot and Heartseeker. In fact I guess Heartseeker is in direct competition to Twin Shot... For multiclasses they only have one thing going: (single target) Accuracy. Okay, also Driving Flight.

Rangers are supposed to be Strikers/Defenders. Rogues have only the single Striker role assigned. Of course quite often a strong offense is the best defense

Eh, I kinda like the flavor of Hunter's claw. You study, prepare, patiently stalk and reap benefits. But it may be pretty cumbersome in practice indeed. Plus I agree that more Accuracy bonuses wasn't necessarily what the Ranger needed. The upgrade helps but... a MAX of 20% additive damage bonus vs one enemy race after several encounters and min. 20 Bond spent is terribly underwhelming at PL VI. Rogues get +50% passive vs all - with no resources spent and always active if you meet conditions (agreed, they are supposed to be better Strikers, BUT the gap is pretty huge...). Maybe if it were multiplicative. Or added 3-5% damage per stack

The great return of the Drizzt trope has already been celebrated with a parade of whirling striking dervish with dual sabers. I guess some Riptide brought them to PoE. The trope is older then Drizzt though. What about Aragorn? Don't remember him fighting using a bow.

On the positive side, SA can't graze either. So as long as you land at least a graze on the enemy, you'll still do full SA damage. Of course, you still want to reliably hit/crit enemies with other attacks in order to actually generate Focus for SA.

Well, if your cone is large enough due to Int and you have targets outside "melee range", then yes. The ring doesn't work for targets adjacent to you.

Sadly it appears not to stack with Borrowed Instinct. And here I was thinking that would be the highest Accuracy character. Also Grazes don't work. And at least once I've had an event where I hit two enemies with WotEP and got only 1 stack... hmm... Maybe it literally needs to be "melee" range? As Marksmen's Ring bonus kicked in...

But the description does. Screens are here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/105794-v300-is-now-available-on-the-beta-branch/page-3

My understanding is that those abilities to gain stacks are melee only.

Ranger had: 10 Marked Prey 10 Stalker's Link 20 Accurate Wounding Shot (optional 10 from Survival of the Fittest, but need to damage the enemy first). That's on top of what a Devoted/Monk could have, I think. Then there is the new Hunter's Claw... But looking at the description, it seems each stack costs 2 Bond. So max 5-6 stacks? Maybe 10-12 if dual wielding and both attacks hit? But then you don't have any Bond left for Accurate Wounding Shot/Marked Prey. Well, maybe Whispers of the Endless Paths could help to hit multiple enemies per attack (gain several stacks?). Seems like Cipher's Ancestor's Memory is almost obligatory... Edit: Silly me.... Forgot that resources regenerate between encounters. So you actually only need multiple enemy groups to fight.