AndreaColombo

^ I'll add that I normally prefer higher difficulty setting to change A.I. and encounter design, rather than to give arbitrary cheesy bonuses to enemies' stats.

What you say stems from a broader problem PoE suffers from: A disproportionate power divide between completionist and non-completionist runs. In PoE the amount of XP required to level up increases linearly and therefore remains relatively small at higher levels; gaining a level makes a big difference in terms of how powerful a character is. These two things make it so that a completionist who maxes out has significantly more power than a non-completionist who doesn't. By contrast, in IE games the amount of XP required to level up increased sharply the higher your level (quadratically, if memory serves, but don't quote me on this), and at the end of the game completionists would be but a very few levels above non-completionists. All of this was explained in detail in an excellent thread over here back when the game was released; no link handy unfortunately. In this context, balancing PoE is necessarily hard. An assumption was made at Obsidian that most people who'd buy the game would be casuals who wouldn't do completionist runs, and the game was balanced in a way that would let characters below maximum level beat it. Unfortunately this also meant that completionists would end up steamrolling the second half of the game, as we know. A solution would have been to balance the hardest difficulty setting and the optional high-level scaling around full parties of 6 optimized (not necessarily min/maxed) characters within the context of a completionist run. For a sequel, the leveling scale should be changed to reduce the power divide between completionists and non-completionists, thus making it easier to balance the game—and of course the hardest difficulty setting should be balanced around a full party of optimized characters who do completionist runs. I don't mind maxing out relatively early, as I have the most fun when all my characters are maxed out, fully equipped, and realize the full potential of their build while looking totally badass XD But at that point I would like what fights are left to be challenging. If enemies die after two swings of my estoc, stuff gets boring fast.

We already have a discussion for this, albeit a bit old by now: link I normally play Zahua as either a variant of the Juggernaut, or a light-armored DPS build (which is basically a variant of the Juggernaut where I also swap heavy armor for Monk's outfit.) Recently I've been having a blast with Hiravias as the Thundercat.

Bracketed scaling would be a good solution, imo. Or scaling only for critical path material, so that it stays challenging while side quests can be super-hard or ROTFLSTOMP depending on your level. My preferred solution would be optional bracketed scaling for everything, provided that the final boss (and perhaps other climatic boss fights like the dragons) would scale all the way up to maximum level.

Afraid the time is over. They said they'd release the full-on patch today.

They've been speedy with the last couple patches though; might be tomorrow for GoG users.

^ same here XD

The time has come to address the bizarre elephant in the room: Stacking rules

Not much. Going by memory it's a couple Darguls that you can make to attack your enemies (they won't do so automatically.) By the time you get the estoc, they'll already feel underpowered; so was my experience at any rate.

Why not use the IE Mod?

^ because of additional fixes and/or rebalancing of underwhelming encounters?

I want there to be a meaning to our lives, but I've failed to find it so far. If all there is is a meaningless journey, I'm not interested; who wants to walk a thousand miles just for the sake of walking them?

If there's no point to the journey, why journey? Just because such is life and everyone else is doing it? Personally I wouldn't qualify either of those as a compelling reason

Thought the bug with Iron Wheel on naked characters had been fixed in 3.03?

You buy or craft them again? Besides, dragons are among the hardest fights; no point in hoarding consumables for another, easier encounter.

Why 2/rest if all other forms have 1/rest abilities, anyway?

I believe Wildstrike belt is the only item in the game that carries over when you spiritshift; everything else is out until you're back to your normal form.

Ah, yes--hadn't considered solo play. In that case, it is indeed likely too short (I say "likely" because I lack first-hand experience with solo play.) In a party it's enough to steal the show from your dedicated DPS guys

With good INT, it lasts long enough to kill many enemies IME

All Druid forms attack at the speed of dual-wielding Average weapons with the exception of Cat/Stelgaer, which attack as though they dual-wielded Fast weapons: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86684-mechanics-the-big-attack-speed-conundrum/ As for the Stelgaer shape, we've already established that it offers no bonus to damage compared to Cat; can't test right now but I'm pretty sure it doesn't offer any extra Accuracy either.

Just checked myself. At level 16, Hiravias's base damage is 32-50 and so is the base damage of a hired Druid when spiritshifted into cat form

Well, mechanically it really is the same as the regular cat form; the changes are merely cosmetic (or so Josh said on SA way back, shortly after the game's release.) Not that cosmetic changes would be unimportant, mind you—I chose to use Hiravias over a min/maxed henchman precisely because I love how the Autumn Stelgaer form looks.

Updated the Tank of Pain build to reflect AlexDeLarge's suggestion to use Shatterstar instead of Sheathed in Autumn as the weapon of choice. It comes a lot earlier and offers the same +1 engagement slot perk with an extra +50% crit damage and more flexibility in choosing your own lash instead of being stuck with one given. @FluxWing — Confident Aim is a great ability and I will definitely be taking it with all my build variants after 3.04 lands. Recently I've been avoiding it because of the bug that makes it impossibly overpowered upon saving/reloading. Thanks for posting your build, by the way! It's always interesting to see other approaches to filling the same role in a party, and in fact there would be nothing wrong with giving it its own, dedicated thread with the fancy name

And you don't even need to min/max. Hiravias built as the Thundercat easily out-DPSs everyone in my party.

No orchestra; you only really need one scroll of Moonwell (or a Druid to cast the spell) to execute that strategy. Credit where credit is due, I got this whole idea from Boeroer's Chillfog build thread. My party composition is as follows: Glass of Pain protagonist (without Cloak of Tireless Defender, which my tank is using instead.) Tank of Pain (using the Cloak; could be replaced with any other build if you don't need or want a tank.) The Unfaithful Thundercat Juggernaut (more like a custom variant, really) The Last Unicorn (which is the cool-looking variant of Chillfog ) Glass of Pain has Constant Recovery + Rapid Recovery + Belt of Bountiful Healing + high MIG score + Survival healing multiplier bonus. Tank of Pain has the same as above + Cloak of the Tireless Defender. Juggernaut and The Unfaithful both have Veteran's Recovery; Juggernaut also gets the Survival healing multiplier bonus (I chose extra DR for The Unfaithful.) Thundercat is wearing Manhea's armor (+25% healing received.) Everyone gets Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits from The Last Unicorn, which is a high-MIG, high-INT Chanter wearing St. Borragia's Tears (+15% Healing done.) The Last Unicorn also has Veteran's Recovery. All the above + a scroll of Moonwell from The Last Unicorn means everyone heals the heck out throughout the fight. None of my men are ever in the red except when a dragon uses their breath weapon; then they're in the red for a short time before the healing gets them all back up to full Endurance. At level 16 you also get the +100% Healing chant which further amplifies the effect. Pair all of this with Champion's Boon + Form of the Delemgan (which effectively means +13 DR against most damage types) and you're practically immortal