Odd Hermit

I played through with companions already, and find it dull playing with pre-made, lackluster builds. If I could customize the companions myself I'd use them all the time, but I can't without mods that I don't care to install yet. My current playthrough is Path of the Damned and I'm enjoying the better synergy, damage output, survivability of a fully custom party with wise attribute spreads, talent and abilities picks, and so on and so on. It makes the combat more interesting to me, and the game has a lot of combat.

Mind Plague is very late game though, when other casters have some crazy stuff too. I agree 3/4 are a bit mediocre and not as cost effective as 1/2 though. I use Secret Horrors a fair amount 'cause it's a large AoE and applies two debuffs though.

I use Arbalest personally. It has long range, prones on crits, high damage, and my Cipher has high dex and gunner so reloads it quickly enough. Blunderbuss lacks against high DR, and requires extra talents to be good. It is quite nice with Draining Whip though. I used it in my hard playthrough but I'm using Arbalest for PotD. My off-set is a Hatchet and Small Shield, which is something I give to all my damage characters along with Weapon and Shield style eventually. Major boost to survivability with no accuracy penalty to their spells.

They should add some things that allow enemies to force through as well. Perhaps a prone character should allow hostiles to bypass, for example. And/or some melee enemies could just have knock-backs.

Ah, there's Mind Wave and there's Amplified Thrust, that's the reason for confusion here. Mind Wave is definitely good.

I feel like Godlike didn't provoke a strong enough reaction, mainly. The others are fine as they're not intended to be that remarkable. There aren't anything like Drow in the setting. Death Godlike specifically probably should've taken more flak, and the BB NPCs probably shouldn't have been so Godlike-heavy in some areas.

I wasn't that impressed with Amplified Wave. I take it for its occasional utility but I think Mind Lance is usually better damage - it costs more but you can hit a fair number of targets with it.

Depends on how much time goes by for your stronghold to collect taxes, how much you buy/sell, how many people wearing nice gear you kill, and so on. But I would say for a typical casual playthrough, scarce early on but plentiful late game. Stronghold is a big money sink during the mid-game, but potentially pays off late game.

It was a bit nerfed in the last patch right? I didn't list it because I only listed actual spells. Radiance is more an ability. I tried to re rate some based on feedback, but somehow can't edit my initial post anymore. Ether I got blind and lost sight of edit button, or they have some weird editing rules on this forum. So in the mean time: @Bubbles. Agreed on Armour of Faith, it should be higher. 6/10? I still think it gets pushed back in the line when better beneficial spells become available. @Odd Hermit on Supress Afliction. So it does work! Still certainly not 10/10? I'd be willing to boost it to 7/10. @Omg Fireballs. I don't know how I missed that +10% on damage in Blessing, so yea that should bump it up. I mean, it's 10% on everything. 7/10. It still does nothing to accuracy. As for Withdraw, I never even thought of that one. Iconic Projection. Base on feedback 7/10. Anyway, if I can't find a way of editing it, I'll post the rest under here later. I don't care how high you put it, but it's basically an AoE dispel for all hostile effects on allies, and it works on every negative effect I've tried it against. The only issue with it is how confusing the way the game displays it is. For me it's a 10/10 on PotD and a staple of my tactics against tough fights.

The big thing w/Cipher is you get something close to the power of a caster on difficult fights, while they're way better for dealing with everything in between. A free-casting mid-high level Priest/Druid/Wizard feel overall more powerful if you've got all their spells/rest and are just unleashing on a big fight. But a cipher you get to unleash on every single fight. Also, Tenuous Grasp is just insanely good for 10 focus(I think Confusion effect needs some fix/nefs), and Mental Binding @ 15. They're also very fast casts making Cipher a good emergency CCer. I will spam Tenuous Grasp or Mental Binding on some fights, between a shot or two with an Arbalest to keep gaining focus between. As for Chanter, I use level 1 Phrases mainly, until I can summon a phantom to stunlock something, then I might switch to higher level chants. Phantom is just a great summon - it's crazy fragile on PotD but if you use it well it's one of the more reliable CCs out there for putting on non-melee targets or just for flanking. I use it over the 4 phrase cost summons almost always.

Might is great if you're cheesing retaliation. Otherwise, your talents will mostly be for tanking and your damage will suck anyway, so go Con. Also I don't see a great reason to put anything into Int for fighters, their active abilities with durations are limited and last long enough w/out high int. I'd balance Con and Int out if maxing Might/Per/Res, especially on PotD where health pool for a tank can be important.

dammit comcast

Generally, if you're using a higher damage weapon, I think the attack speed loss will reduce your damage output more than the DR penetration increases it. I don't believe either of them apply to bows(I've never thought to test it), but there's penetrating shot for that which is, like vulnerable attack, better for weaker damage but faster ranged weapons - or the blunderbuss.

I tried Darcozzi out and it is indeed just too weak, not worth a talent. Even with Scion of Flames, which isn't really a good talent for tanking, doesn't make its damage good enough. Personally I don't think any of the Priest or Paladin Deity/Order specific talents are worth taking, except maybe Skaen for the sneak attack which is quite strong relative to everything else which are really weak 1 spell/rest and not worth casting most of the time anyway.

I am aware of this, I'm saying some debuffs are better than others to the point that it's a waste of an action to use them if they aren't any more/less reliable than stronger ones.

Most abilities have about the same accuracy. Spells are +10-15, while melee classes tend to have higher accuracy base for weapons and their special abilities. A major problem that I am seeing is that few abilities are balanced around accuracy. Pick the most powerful thing that targets the enemies weakest defense and that tends to be the end of it. There are a ton of abilities that aren't spectacular effect wise, that have about the same chance to affect a target, so why use them? I think accuracy bonuses need to vary much more. Debuffs that are 100% disables definitely should be lower. Debuffs that are less powerful should be higher. And variation based on AoE and range and so on. Let's take two level 2 Cipher abilties for example. Mental Binding and Psychovampiric Shield. If you can successfully land the former, the latter doesn't matter too much, really. But they have the same chance to hit, target the same defense, and cost the same amount of the Cipher's resources. This is just one example of many, and not even the worst of them. There are situations where I'd use the latter if only because of the longer duration, but overall my point is that many more subtle debuffs feel pointless when they have the same chance to apply to a target as something more powerful. There's also the issue of per-encounter/limited resource abilities where if you miss you've used 50-100% of your active ability options. A fighter misses knockdown, a paladin misses flames of devotion, etc. and they don't have many options after that. This is only part of why most of my melee are relegated to tanking - they can't do the buff/dispel/debuff dance to ensure their abilities land. I could do it for them with my casters, but casters have more powerful debuffs to apply anyway so a 2/encounter knock down or flames of devotion feels extremely trivial. Another thing that could help is accuracy bonuses to different components of a spell or ability. It's already partially in place since some things attack deflection and a defense, but having higher accuracy on a weaker part of an ability could lessen the "whiff" spam a bit. We've all learned how fun it is spam missing targets from the shades in the temple of Eothas already I imagine. Overall having abilities like that just do flat-out nothing feels bad. I think accuracy needs to be dramatically boosted for certain staple abilities assuming they're not too powerful, and perhaps toned down on those "save or die" kind of spells for casters.

Cipher have some very potent disables, where if you get it off successfully it can feel like you've basically won already. Wizard is the same. However, Wizard who can't spam the most devastating spell at a highly resistant target because they can run out even on single fights. A Cipher can just keep going for that payoff as long as they can deal some weapon damage. Basically I view Cipher as a "chromatic orb" class for tough fights, at least on PotD. You might miss a lot sometimes but if/when it works it's devastating. One debuff opens up their weaknesses and then all your other classes can go to town stacking them on.

Suppress Affliction is a 10/10. It works, and some of the most devastating effects are countered by it, including terrified which is super frigging annoying. The issue is that it doesn't remove the effect from the character's little buff/debuff icons, so it looks like it hasn't done anything to those used to standard dispel mechanics. Edit: It's also extra confusing because effects that get reapplied post-suppress affliction will override it. It definitely needs clearer indications. You have to pretty much check your stats. I have spam-suppressed some effects just to keep decent accuracy on some fights, because many enemies spam terrified effects. Iconic Projection is also great, it's my main heal because it's bursty and easy to affect most of the targets in need with. The damage isn't spectacular(I wouldn't take secrets of rime for it) but it's still nice.

Wood Elf = best Wizard race hands down no question whatsoever. Moon Godlike is the only other consideration, really. But +5 accuracy on all spells beyond close range is just always useful while every other race is either much more situational or just completely negligible. I build my wizard for my PotD run like this: Mig 17 Con 7 Dex 17 Per 9 Int 19 with the + 1 from culture Old Vailia Res 9 You could drop per/res more and bump might and dex further but I am weird about numbers and like the 17-7-17-9-19-9. Chill Fog is still amazing. The friendly fire zone is big enough assuming you have high int. I never use the daze spell since Priest has Interdiction and Wizard has 2 dazing AoEs per encounter in Arcane Assault.

I agree that exploring this sort of setting in first person could be cool. However Skyrim's engine is garbage. Really, really garbage. It just makes everything clunky feeling, movement and combat just feel bad in that engine. Even when other developers, including Obsidian, used it. Also you can lose a lot of the dark/gritty feeling when you have to look at 3D graphics, even the good ones. Isometric pulls off a certain aesthetic that's rare to find in 3D. There's an element of mystery in not looking at awkward faces poorly mouthing words at you, and so on. Text and a more distant view allows for more imagination to fill in the blanks with something more elegant than 3D computer graphics.

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts. Killing kith/humanoid opponents or passing on them would be quite reasonable... if things were like in the IE games, where you wouldn't pick up absolutely everything and cart it off to a merchant. Passing on animal/monster opponents would be quite reasonable... if you didn't need 14 swine snouts for a fire lash, or whatever. They focused so much on the experience that this completely passed them by, but ultimately, I don't think Obsidian even understood the reasoning behind Goal-Oriented Experience vs. Murderhobo Experience, since they did include the Bestiary Experience, Lockpicking Experience and Trap Experience, which runs completely counter to that. I think they did it because it helped them to keep track of the experience in the game... the only thing speaking against that if that was their motivation... well they really dropped the ball, considering how uneven the leveling is in the game. I still think for this game they made the right decision. Not in every instance, but in not going to far into survival territory. It's fairly linear and the game doesn't have systems to generate interesting content beyond their "hand-crafted" stuff. And trying to balance combat with resource management could just be too much considering they started somewhat from scratch on this. I'd like to see a more slow paced, open, resource management-heavy game like this but for PoE I don't think there's enough of a place for it to add much yet. I agree lockpick/trap XP is just bad though.

Focus generation and damage output is better in melee. However, to reliably survive melee you need to sacrifice offense for defense, which is a tough call to make. Many fights you won't need that much focus generation, and the fights where you do are generally more dangerous to put a non-tank into melee range. I prefer ranged cipher. It's just much more convenient. You have more freedom to angle various spells. I do use a Pike from time to time though, if I know being behind the tank doesn't put my cipher into too much danger. Soldier Focus gives +accuracy to some good ranged weapons and the Pike.

I think almost any class can handle enemies they get the jump on with +move speed and a ranged weapon. Chanter, cipher, rogue, etc. it doesn't really matter if you're just taking weaker enemies 1 by 1. It's when the games drops just enemies in a circle around you that you're in trouble it seems like, and I believe there are a fair number of those in the main quest line. Rogue just has the best escape tool for that currently. Cipher isn't bad due to ringleader but if it misses you can be fubar. Hell I suppose a Wizard could conceivably do it, though I obviously wouldn't choose them due to spells/rest limitation. You could... accept your defeat because it's iron man. That's the whole point, and what everyone keeps trying to tell you. You chose the wrong path, the wrong items, the wrong dialogue choice, the wrong whatever and are supposed to suffer the consequences for your lack of preparation. It's not supposed to be fair. It obviously requires pre-knowledge of some things. But you can easily cheese if you allow yourself infinite reloads. Iron Man is intended to prevent spamming a tactic until it succeeds. You're supposed to find the tactics that reliably work which is much more difficult. Essentially your game was a double crown solo, be happy with that. It's still an achievement.

Combat still gives loot so yeah. Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

A wizard has 30 base + 10 hp/level. So take a level 5 wizard, with 18 con(+24%) and you have: 70 base endurance + (70 * .24) = 86.8 +17 HP for 8 attribute points. That 8 attribute points could be giving you much more substantial benefits somewhere else. ___ Take a level 5 wizard with 3 con(-21%) and you have: 70 - (70 * .21) = 55.3 Minimum con = ~63% of max con, and 15 free attribute points. 15 attribute points can give you +21% damage, +40% duration, +48% AoE on spells. Considering spells = the real survivability for Wizards, it's an easy choice. Not that you actually need to minimize constitution to get those, I usually drop it to 7 personally. -9% which is about 7 endurance lost. ___ Now take a more durable class, and consider that while the HP difference is bigger, you're already higher durability and can afford to lose more assuming you're not on tanking duty. That +15 to attributes seems pretty good. That said, difficulty also factors in a fair bit. Deflection probably is weaker on PotD I'm pretty sure, seems enemies definitely have higher accuracy so raw HP may be the way to go as long as deflection isn't so bad you're getting crit regularly. For melee that get a decent endurance/level gain it might be worth taking con on PotD.