Caerdon

Can't disagree there. Well, I could, but... that would be just stupid.

Would you please stop spamming?

Yup, iMUSE was fantastic. Unfortunately it required a lot of work with all the transitions - and as you noted, not many even noticed it...

I totally agree. 3 DRB should be enough for estoc, 2 for stiletto. I also think slashing weapons should be buffed a bit. Slash/Pierce (Best) is an almost non-existent benefit over plain Pierce, as there are very few enemies that are more vulnerable to slashing than piercing.

There's a lot of coding on top of Unity to make the engine what it is. That's why inXile is using PoE tech for Torment instead of just vanilla Unity.

So, the OP just pastes the same thing a few times, and here we are: people arguing about the same thing over and over and over again. Well trolled.

The only backtracking I've done on Hard so far has been backtracking to an earlier part of a dungeon to pick up the camping supplies I couldn't pick up at the time because I was full. And that's rarely even necessary.

I'd love to see this.

Second one at level 2? Ten missiles?!? Hax! Reported.

Deflection defends against ordinary melee and ranged attacks in combat (and some spells that physically target you directly). Reflex represents a dodge against AOE spells like Fireball. Fortitude defends against stuff that attacks your physical endurance, like poison and knockdown attemps. Will resists attempts to affect your mind, which you seem to know already.

Longsword is a two-handed weapon.

Arcane Assault's description definitely suggests that, though it's far from conclusive proof.

This is, in fact, my favourite line. I'll try not to hold that against you in the future. No promises, though.

I'd like to take this moment to announce that I hate Durance's voice overacting. I find it ostentatious and annoying, especially that "and what does the flame reveal?" Whew, I feel better now. As you were.

Yeah, Knock Down and Disciplined Barrage both inrease your accuracy relative to your target's deflection, so both function as DPS talents. Other than that, a fighter's DPS comes from passives: Weapon Focus & Specialization, Confident Aim and even Armored Grace in a way.

Actually, it's not. It was mentioned way, way, waaaaay back as an intended mechanic, but it was never tested during the beta because.. well.. it didn't exit. The beta was capped at 8, so no beta-tester really got a chance to try this out. Originally low-level spells were ultimately meant to become at-will abilities... maybe we can still get that if we ask nicely?

I, for one, have no problem with 1H being subpar. In reality, 1H fighting only happens in self-defence situations, because carrying a single, light weapon only is just so convenient compared to alternatives. Anyone who's actually expecting to get into a fight and gets to prepare for it, would take a buckler, a shield, a companion weapon or a proper two-handed weapon. It's nice that 1H still offers some unique benefit, though.

I too prefer EE over the modded vanilla. It's clear as day that the codebase has been improved a lot, it just feels so much slicker in every way. And I've had no problems getting all the important mods like Stratagems and Item Randomizer to work.

And speaking of 15-year-old functionality, custom character biographies.

The world map, too.

I so much want the sequel to take place there.

Uh... what? You're totally missing the point. The point is simply this: give us the per-encounter spells gradually, not all at once. You're probably confused by the number 6 in my post. I'm not sure what I was thinking there, should've been 8 or something - but I think it was pretty clear it was just an example.

A bit underappreciated, IMO. Good especially if you want something very low-maintenance (but bad if you want something with lots of active abilities and tactical options). They have great accuracy, and that in itself leads to good damage output.

Thanks for the extensive write-up, Luckmann, you pretty much nailed it. Not much to add there. Things will definitely get interesting with expansions and sequels. It's clear the old wisdom still holds true for PoE: combat classes progress linearly, wizards progress quadratically. I hope Obsidian isn't afraid to make big changes when they finally realize it's the right thing to do. And just to be clear: even my suggestion was nothing more than a quick band-aid solution, not something that would truly fix the underlying problem.

It seems there's a little misunderstanding. I'm not suggesting that any specific spell (that you'd get or not get to choose) would become per-encounter. I'm suggesting that you'd have, for example, two per-encounter and two per-rest level one spell slots. This way you could always use two arbitrary level one spells for free in every encounter, but the third and fourth would consume a per-rest slot each.