AndreaColombo

Not sure I follow. Attack rolls are based on random d100 that can really be anything at any time (though it likely makes use of a semi-random algorithm to simulate randomness, but that's beside the point.) Having high Accuracy just means it is more likely for you to hit or cit than it is to miss or graze, but a low roll can always happen and - at the end of the day - it is always your Accuracy + roll vs. the enemy's Deflection (or whatever defense you are targeting.) If you are getting low rolls all the time in every fight, that might be the symptom of an issue; barring that, I would pen it to bad luck.

Indeed Half-Mast is the weapon I use as backup for the Blade of the Endless Paths. It is the only very good pollaxe in the game, and it conveniently shares the same Weapon Focus group as the Estoc, on top of the sweet Overbearing enchant. I did not mention it explicitly as most blights you encounter in the game are actually in Caed Nua or early side content in Act II, so you won't have much use for Half-Mast after you get it (though, come to think of it, there are a few Rain Blights in Elmshore and with the Ethik Nol.) An alternative to the strategy I described would be to refine Half-Mast with Durgan Steel, bringing its recovery time down to roughly 25 frames (I'm eyeballing it; didn't test) and using it as your primary weapon for the Overbearing property; Blade of the Endless Paths would be your backup weapon against particularly high-DR foes (and you could get away with no Durgan Steel on it; it would be slightly faster than Half-Mast and you'd save ingots for other pieces of equipment.) Or you could use Durgan Steel on both weapons and switch as you saw fit, though Blade of the Endless Paths would have higher DPS so I'd end up using it all the time anyway except against Rain Blights ('sides, I generally prefer to spread Durgan Steel around rather than to invest most of it just on my main.)

There really should be consequences for wanton murder, though. It was there in BG and BGII; it just seems ridiculous that you can just murder everyone around and nobody cares or even notices. From a story perspective, killing one or more of the most influential groups in Defiance Bay should have massive reactivity consequences.

Well, tjayharvey did post on Nexus on 23rd October, saying he wouldn't have time to look into the mod for a few days ... which suggests he's still on, just busy. Fingers crossed.

Personally, I'm on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to resources. I don't like to be limited in what I can afford, and I especially don't want to have to think over what potions or scrolls I can use. I enjoy the most when my party as at its maximum, fully buffed and ready to dispense death. If I had to eke out my potions and scrolls, I would be rather appalled. If money influx was to be restricted in this game, it would be great to make that optional for people like me who eke out cash enough in real life

I wanted to wait until I installed 2.03 to make this post, but as the IE Mod's maintainers haven't been around since mid-October, I prefer to wait with the patch as I'd rather stick to 2.02 with the mod than to play without. So here's a build update. Weapon Choice My Tidefall + St Ydwen's Redeemer pure-melee run has proven most satisfactory, as Tidefall is notoriously beastly and St Ydwen's Redeemer can positively one-shot Thaos's minions. However, I have been thinking of a few more options that could kick ass on the Lady of Pain, and I've come up with the following: The Hours of St. Rumbalt (crit build) The Hours of St. Rumbalt is conveniently available for sale in Dyford, which means it can be picked up early, and comes with the Accurate 3 enchantment that adds +12 Accuracy—a perfect match for its Annihilation and Overbearing properties. Of course the Lady of Pain is a high-damage mistress, so you'll eventually want to enchant it to Superb to get the +45% damage, but you can easily go with Accurate 3 until you get the Sky Dragon eyes. Here are the key points of this alternative: Pick up the sword in Dyrford as soon as you can. Even though you'll be missing out on the damage multiplier until you're in Act III, the early +12 bonus to Accuracy will make you crit a lot, which is the meat and potatoes of this weapon choice. Durgan Steel has awesome synergy with this weapon, as it converts 20% of your hits to crits and provides an extra +30% crit damage bonus that stacks with Annihilation by design (confirmed by Josh.) Be mindful of the fact that your hit-to-crit conversion from Durgan Steel does not stack with the Priest spell Dire Blessing, however (so just don't waste that spell on the Lady of Pain after using Durgn Steel on The Hours of St. Rumbalt.) For this build, you will want to ditch the Knights of the Crucible and side with the Doemenels in Defiance Bay. This will grant you the Merciless Hand talent, which gives you another +30% crit damage bonus. Another +10% will come in Act III from the Dungeon Delver talent that was already part of this build. When all is said and done, your crit damage multiplier will be 50% (crit) + 50% (Annihilation) + 30% (Durgan Steel) + 30% (Merciless Hand) + 10% (Dungeon Delver) = +170% and your crits will prone your target to boot, thus making it more likely for you to land a crit the next time. The prone-on-crit effect also works in combo with Apprentice's Sneak Attack, granting you an additional +15% damage on your next attack. A major drawback of this choice is that if you want to crank it to 11, you need to invest 2 Sky Dragon eyes to make it Superb. The same is not true of blades that already come with the Superb enchantment, like Tidefall. With this build, you'll have an attack animation of 24 frames and a recovery of 33 frames (29 + 4-frame delay), which is pretty good for a two-hander in plate armor with Vulnerable Attack (this is assuming you sip a potion of Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, which I strongly advise you do at the beginning of every encounter.) However, if you want to attack even faster, you may want to check this other option. Blade of the Endless Paths The Blade of the Endless Paths is the only two-hander in the game to have been blessed with the Speed enchantment, which reduces recovery by 20% and stacks with pretty much everything else that does the same—including the speed bonus from Durgan Steel. It is quite serendipitous that it happens to also be an Estoc, which means you can activate Vulnerable Attack to enjoy a whopping 10 DR Bypass. Here are the key points: Switching from Great Sword to Estoc means you lose something on flexibility, as Great Swords conveniently deal Slash/Crush damage and Estocs only deal Piercing. Now, the game doesn't feature an exceeding amount of creatures that are immune to Piercing, but you may want to keep a Pollaxe or St Ydwen's Redeemer in your second slot to handle just those cases. The Blade of the Endless Paths already comes with the Superb enchantment, which means there's no Sky Dragon eyes expenditure to go through to maximize your damage output. Vulnerable Attack stacks with its 5 DR bypass property, so you can have a 10 DR bypass to complement your ridiculously high DPS. The Speed enchantment, paired with Armored Grace, Durgan Steel (on both your armor and weapon), a 25 Dexterity score (17 base, +3 Ring of Thorns, +3 Caed Nua resting bonus, +2 Rauatai Sweet Pie), and a potion of Deleterious Alacrity of Motion will make you attack for 24 frames and recover for a measly 15 (11 + 4-frame delay.) This is with Vulnerable Attack active and patch 2.02, which means Armored Grace reduces your recovery penalty by 16%. In 2.03 you'll be 4% faster than that just on accounts of Armored Grace; turning off Vulnerable Attack against low-DR enemies will get you very close to no recovery (or right there; I haven't tested it.) If you want, you can swap your Gauntlets of Accuracy for Ryona's Vambraces to get an extra 3 DR bypass, for a total of 13. This is going to be particularly useful against high-DR targets such as Adra Animats and Dragons, but way overkill against most other enemies so you may consider swapping bracers depending on the enemy you're fighting. Props to Boeroer for suggesting this. 2.03 Fighter update Quickly going through the Fighter update in patch 2.03: CC immunities mean your Knock Downs won't always be the "get out of jail free" card they used to be. However, the addition of a +20% damage multiplier to them means they remain relevant even against enemies that are immune to the prone affliction. Indeed, by taking Knock Down, Bonus Knock Down, and Sundering Blow, you now have five attacks per encounter at +20% regardless of any other effect (and there's no immunity against the -8 DR from Sundering Blow anyway.) Clear Out gets scaling damage, which is neat but not enough to make it a big deal. It is still an ability you want to have in case mobs surround you and start interrupting you at speed, as a Clear Out would quickly rid you of the inconvenience. The extra damage is gravy, but hardly something I'd actively seek out in combat (when you hit as hard as the Lady of Pain, you generally want your enemies to stay close rather than to be pushed away from you.) Into the Fray also gets scaling damage, and it would be an excellent ability if it wasn't so damn easy for its pull effect to be blocked by pretty anything that might stand in the way between your target and you. However, because it is so easy for your enemy to be blocked and stop at a distance from you, I still advise against taking Into the Fray. Armored Grace gets a boost from -16% to -20% recovery penalty. A great ability has just become better. A must-have it was, and a must-have it remains. Disciplined Barrage was changed from +10 to +15 Accuracy, making it a perfect substitute for Scroll of Valor whenever you run out of scrolls—or whenever the scroll's effect expires and combat's still ongoing (a great thing about Disciplined Barrage is its instantaneous casting time; as soon as the scroll expires you can click it and keep maiming your foes with high Accuracy.) Look how cool I am, or of Shameless Self Promotion.

Screenshot?

Likely. After years disliking Monks on the base of their (A)D&D implementation, playing Zahua as the Juggernaut opened my eyes to how good (and, above all, how much fun) they are in PoE. Indeed, I've been toying with the idea of making a cross-over Juggernaut of Pain build to see how much of an AWESOMESAUCE button it would turn out to be. Then again, if I combined both builds into a single character, I'd have one less interesting build in my party Honestly, the things that keep me anchored to the Fighter class for my build are mostly these: Generally speaking, I prefer flat bonuses that stay on all the time to bonuses that only last for a given amount of time. Case in point: Swift Strikes takes wounds to activate and has a set duration that is generally insufficient for a whole fight, so you need to spend time reactivating it; it also doesn't stack with Frenzy or Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Armored Grace is always on and stacks with DAoM. I like big numbers in my character sheet (yes, I know it's stupid) and I prefer consistent damage output to spike damage output (this is also a reason why Rogues don't really click with me, despite being pretty good in PoE.) Fighters have access to specialization chains that grant damage bonuses that stay on all the time; Monk abilities like Lightning Strikes or Turning Wheel either have a limited duration, or require you to have wounds. With this I'm not saying Monks are bad, worse than Fighters, or that their abilities are in short supply and can't be spammed or used to a good extent in combat; I'm merely stating my preference for stuff that doesn't require an activation and doesn't expire.

Would you happen to know whether that particular dialog option has specific stat requirements? I usually play low-Resolve characters and I'm sure I've never seen it. That breastplate is rather good looking and the aesthetics bitch in me would totally want to toy with it.

^ How do you get to wear that armor? I thought it was impossible. Recently I like to have Raiment of Wael's Eyes on my Wizard, and Golden Scales on my Priest (looks awesome with Scath Gwannek and Sheathed in Autumn.) GM looks groovy with Autumn Fire and Sabra Marie.

Josh - if you are reading this please, for the love of all that is good, make a high-level Chanter ability called "Wuthering Strike" in TWM pt. II. It's the ultimate literary pun.

Really hoping this is still being maintained; the guys haven't been around for a while

^ I do not know off the top of my head but I can test it tonight or during the weekend.

^ I'll be posting some updates to it shortly. I managed to get 10 DR bypass and 15-frame recovery with a pure-melee version.

^ likely they forgot to pull it from the build before pushing it live. An involuntary marketing tool for the curious and the inquisitive. I like that

^ actually, because attributes' effects are percentage based, having higher base health and endurance means you get hit harder from dumping CON. Barbarians do get away more easily with lighter armor because of that, though. I still like Fighters better because reasons, but I'm also the kind of person who would sacrifice mechanical efficiency for aesthetics, so...

spambot - fairly sure "with backers" refers to "share" rather than to "doing".

Reminder to GoG people who don't use Galaxy: You will need to install both the 2.03 patch for the base game AND the 2.03 patch for TWM for a successful update. I've just confirmed this with Brandon.

I'm with Sensuki on this one (but this was never mystery since beta days.) I love this game, but when it was released I just couldn't enjoy combat without disabling engagement through the IE mod. I thought I had a change of heart post 2.0 but I realize now that I can play with engagement because it is mostly inconsequential. As for kiting, I've always seen it as a legitimate play style. If you want to prevent it, make enemy A.I. smart enough to recognize when it's being kited and act upon it. Engagement seems like an artificial solution (and it doesn't really fix the "issue" anyway; but then again, as I said, I don't consider it an issue to begin with.)

Unless I'm missing the obvious, that should bring it down to +25% (-15% from Durgan, -10% from Pilferer's Grip.)

I love you. Thanks for those helmets that match unique armor (I remember suggesting them over here.) My inner aesthetic b**ch is now hyped as eff :D New vithracks are also pretty fantastic!

In PoE you can only learn spells from grimoires. Most scrolls mimic Wizard, Druid, or Priest spells that you may want other characters to be able to cast, or you may want to be able to cast them from scrolls instead of having them use up a slot in your Wizards' grimoire; however there are some that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Notably Scroll of Valor, Scroll of Defense, Scroll Paralysis and Scroll of Maelstrom are four otherwise unavailable spells that are good to have (though honestly I find Scroll of Paralysis to be rather overrated; I haven't really been using it for the past two play throughs and I never use Scroll of Maelstrom.) Scroll of Valor and Scroll of Defense, on the other hand, I make use of in copious amounts. As for Mechanics, it really doesn't make that much of a difference who has it; I wouldn't have it on my main, though, as it doesn't open up any conversation options and has no use in combat.

Pallegina isn't half as annoying, though

Zahua's stats are very close to the Juggernaut's; imho he's one of the strongest story NPCs.

^ the minimum damage bonus was not applying, though judging from your post it seems that might be just a UI/display issue.