rheingold

Come on guys, there was no balance whatsoever in the old games... Just nonsense to suggest otherwise. You can build a perfectly good all round fighter in this game. People are just upset that they can't build a kensai/mage who could do everything.

Is cipher really more powerful than a druid or wizard? I'd say it depends... For much of the game, yes. But my experience with them is that they are underpowered for the big boss fights. When the crunch comes I'd much rather have a wizard/druid. Basically they play like NW 2warlocks, they ARE great for 90 percent of the game, but they cannot match a druid or wizard in the important fights when the big guns are free to unload all their spells. Of course if they have used all their spells then it swings back to the cipher. So I reckon they actually got the balance between cipher/wizard and Druid spot on.

Eh, the key difficulty increases for POTD are defences and enemy accuracy. Rangers have the highest ranged accuracy of anyone and enemy accuracy isn't enormously relevant to a backline character. I'd be surprised if Rangers didn't scale pretty well. Could be, not having any experience on POTD, I don't know, but I do know that a ranger with bows/guns/arbelest is seriously underrated. And the pet is just gravy.

Sagani with a good warbow rocks on hard difficulty, she does insane consistent damage, not spike damage. POTD, like heart of fury mode is not balanced, and you probably need min/maxed characters to do well. And frankly, for most people POTD is irrelevant. Ranger with a bow works fine on hard, if that floats your boat. Most definitely not gimped, in fact quite the opposite. Just get a decent bow like cloud piercer.

Not really. Do you know what the difference between 18 Dex and 10 dex is? Yeah. +24% action speed. This means that a pike-wielding rogue with 18 Dex will be able to hit something with his pike 4 times in the time it takes a pike-wielding rogue with 10 Dex to hit it 3 times.Sounds positively game changing, right? Except that it isn't. Because fights don't last that long in PoE, unless you're a really Sh*tty player, Or you're soloing. And we're also dealing with Pikes. They're slow weapons. And no amount of Dex will make them fast weapons. Maybe if we were talking about Stiletto dual-wielding it'd be a different matter, but again...we aren't. Alright so a few problems: the time length fights last is only relevant insofar as there is potential for attacks to be wasted. Damage, by the same token is also wasted whenever an attack deals more damage than an enemy has health. The only point relevantly in favor of might as opposed to dex is if on an arbitrarily small scale, additional might results in an enemy dying in 2 hits rather than 3, or the best case in which an enemy dies in one hit due to the additional damage from might. However, it is just as possible that an enemy should die in 2 hits no matter the might, making the second attack faster is thus a simple speed increase, However this is all functionally irrelevant, trash encounters that are as fast as you describe are not necessary to make decisions for unless your sole goal is to speed to the end of the game on easy as fast as possible. For PotD, the interesting fights that require min-maxing for greatest efficiency gains are boss battles which do not end in an attack or 2. Now a simple comparison of dex to might for the best case for might on a rogue. I will treat each point of dexterity as worth a 2% dps increase, based on some information I've heard regarding dex, if dex functioned as, as written, a straight 3% increase in the number of attacks per second it would be worth 3% dps, which would exacerbate might's relative inefficiency even more. A level 1 rogue with sneak attack and a normal weapon with 10 might 18 dexterity does 174% of base dps. A level 1 rogue with sneak attack and a normal weapon with 18 might and 10 dexterity does 174% of base dps. So the best case for might on rogue is precisely equal to dexterity. Every additional damage modifier will cause dexterity's effective dps contribution to remain constant while might's will decrease as a percent gain. Example: a level 3 rogue with 10 might 18 dexterity with Reckless Assault, Two-Handed Style and a Fine weapon will deal 232% of base dps. A level 3 rogue with 18 might 10 dexterity and the same talents will deal 224% of base dps. As the number of increase damage modifiers grows, the contribution of might as a % of dps steadily declines while dexterity remains constant. Now of course, for a rogue this is all relatively pointless from a practical perspective, excepting for the decision of which land, as there's no reason to not max both dexterity AND might, still from a theoretical perspective knowing that dexterity out-values might is useful, For me it is good to know. Ironically enough if you are a min/maxer then it's probably irrelevant, but if you want a bit of room for role playing and dialogue it's very useful. I could potentially max dex and put strength around 14 which would leave points to put elsewhere, and frankly it probably wouldn't make much of a difference to the combat effectiveness which is great.

mmm what's a god. Surely just another name for a powerful being that a particular society, in a particular time doesn't have an answer for but needs. Hence the Elven gods in DA who aren't, by an admittedly narrow definition of godhood (supernatural powers), actual gods at all. Just powerful and manipulative mages. All gods have to be creations of mankind. Mainly to make sense of the world. That's what's interesting about the story. Thaos asks a good question, does mankind need gods, not just for religious reasons but for societal reasons. I might also add that while I am a devout atheist I also know that religion has played a huge part in our history and I'm not talking about the last couple of thousand years but rather going all the way back. Without religion, bogeymen and scapegoats, which religion convienently supplies would we have got this far?

At this rate I'm gonna have to do it on easy....

The pike build sounds interesting, I'll give it a go with my next rogue character, currently running a orlan rogue dw, non optimized on hard and oh my is she the original glass cannon. Does insane damage with 2 stilettos, but if anything looks at her she dies. Fun times. BTW the stiletto you can buy in the beginning which grants jolting touch is an absolute beast even at the end game - you just have to enchant it.

Thanks I'll try the summons route - I haven't really used them this play through but on my first one I had a chanter, so yeah that might have been the difference. I agree with you regarding moving your toughest companion forward, under most circumstances, but in this case it feels to much like meta gaming, mainly because they are not in view, the moment you see them contact is initiated. And if in fact I play like I normally do with my rogue scouting ahead it ends up really sadly.

Phew tough to answer, some are easy and some ridiculously difficult. Easy ones from memory - the ranger, pirate and chanter. Tough, as in amongst the hardest fights I had on hard. The warchief, the cipher insect thingy - always forget what the are, and the ogre.

Jeez, I'm getting cleaned out on this fight - I managed on my first play thorough (on hard) with my chanter, mainly through luck. This time with a rogue (also hard), very frustrating. Any advice would be welcome - the only thing I regard as cheese is sending Eder forward to initiate the fight while everyone else cowers by the stairs. I am an 11th level rogue - with Aloth, Durance, Eder, Hiravious and Kana - the power party and I'm getting wiped pretty quickly. I know the mechanics - most of the game is easy on hard, but the charm spells, oh my... By the time Hiravious gets ready to cast the fampyrs are wailing on him, and I'm really, really tired of hearing, "oops let me try again." Aloth gets charmed before he can cast a spell. Durance manages to get off the charms protection spell but it seems to make absolutely no difference. My rogue gets charmed as well. Seems to me that the charms spell is just so damn quick and there is very little chance to defend against it. Poor Eder constantly gets left by himself by my rather fickle party members. BTW all the party members except Kana and Eder are in clothes to cast quicker. Any advice? I don't see a way to win except for luck at the mo.

Yeah, I'm not denying that "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche was an inspiration - it clearly was and probably an important one, but I reckon they have taken quite freely from many sources. And overall, they have done a good job, the writing is good, the story as far as fantasy goes is fairly original.

Yeah there have been many philosophers who dealt with the god question. One of the earlier ones and also possibly an influence is Spinoza. But I'm not sure the writers were influenced by any one writer/philosopher, more likely they were influenced by a hodge podge of people/ideas. The idea that you have to be religious to be good is also something that has really made an appearance in the mainstream audience in the last decade or so. I reckon they are probably just well read on a number of topics. Which any writer should be.

I think there is more than a bit of Philip Pullman - the "Golden Compass series" in the story - which is a very good thing indeed.

You need something from the spider cave to pin the guilt on him:) sorry don't know how to do spoilers. But get it right and he attacks you... Stupid tanner

Yeah, love gog but patching Divinity Original Sin was painful - mainly because you are never quite sure which patch is which. Their patching system needs some work.

It's a difficult one, mainly because the devs took a lot of flack about only having 8 companions. If companions did up and leave some people would be unhappy. So it's a lose lose situation for them. Personally I'd prefer more reactivity and even fights like what happened in BG2 but I understand why it wasn't done.

Paladins suck, Rangers suck, Wizards suck, Barbarians suck.... Is it just the power gamers who have seriously specialized builds who are complaining. Or am I being unfair? Thing is, it's always been like this since the year dot, and the fact that people are complaining about so many of the classes makes me think that Obsidan have done a good job with balance. Yes, there are 1 or 2 overpowered classes but for the rest they all work just fine. Complaining that BG 2 Paladins where weak as opposed to some of the insane builds you could do is simply crazy. You are always going to have the min/maxers, and that means that only relatively few builds will get their approval.

Good war bow and penetrating shot + Vicious aim and she does an obscene amount of damage. Give her an arbelest with vicious aim and she gets lots of knockdowns. Incredibly useful character and the source of a serious amount of consistent damage.

Sagani rocks - she was awesome in the last fight - really consistent damage overall. People seem to be confused with spike damage compared to consistent damage when it comes to Rangers. But I suppose Aloth and Kana were the worst for me - though I didn't mind them at all. They just didn't resonate with me. Hiravious was good but not great, I thought he would have been better if the writer had just toned him down slightly. As it was he was a bit to "Something like Mary." Needed to be a bit more subtle - but I did like his quest. The rest of them were great

Overall I like the voice acting, but the gent who does Aldhelm is absolutely superb, he's just about the best I've ever heard. Funnily enough he reminds me of Pietro in Dishonered who was also fantastic. I don't see the same actor in the credits, so does anyone know who voiced Aldhelm and what he has done before?

Militant feminists - hilarious term actually, the mind boggles, do not force anything on anyone else. The only thing they want is equality.

My last post cause I'm out of here for the moment. The issue is quite simple - if say the limerick had been anti-semitic, anti-black, women or anti-gay, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Because the backer targeted a small and powerless minority it seems ok. Re the censorship - there is no censorship - censorship is when you are told what you can or cannot say. Obsidan did not need to make the stand they did. No one was forcing them to say or do anything. Anything else is bs. There was no censorship period. If they had caught the limerick at the beggining and asked the backer to change it - would it have caused a problem? The bottom line is it's their product and they decide what they want in, not you or me. Why should they allow a minority group to be insulted on their time? Its absolutely ridiculous. And further - things are changing, what was once acceptable is no longer the case. People are far more careful these days, and so they should be. Just because you have the right to cause offence does not mean you should. It's something the online generation is struggling with as they hide behind anonynimity. So yeah, I'm glad things are changing for the better and for those who are upset about Obsidan removing the limerick, you guys have a really tough time coming, because it's the way the world is moving and most people would think it's for the better.

Let me counter your question with: Does my right become more right if I am in a minority, and am I allowed to be more of a **** if I am? Does my right become more right if I also rile up people around me, who have no idea what my emotions are or who I am but they simply feel emotional because I am emotional? Take Denmark's embassy in the Middle-East (Yes, I am comparing with that, if you know what I am talking about), where islamists got riled up because a Danish artists had made a painting of "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named" (lol). Whilst marching towards the embassy, the crowd became larger and larger, and no one in the crowd had any idea what it was all about, but someone had made a painting, probably, and they were yelling and got angry and tossed **** around them and eventually they burned down the embassy... except they burned down the Norwegian embassy too (They probably didn't know which one was which so they burned down both). Does that right make them more right, because they were offended by a cartoon of Mohammed, and that made it right of them to rile up thousands of people around them? What if Obsidian hadn't listened to Erika, would she be allowed to burn down Obsidian's offices and spread hate about them because of a poem? I know my example is a bit extreme, but do you understand what I am saying? Read: I think (2) fits into it LOL Yes, because the people who think the limerick was offensive are now planning to burn Obsidans office down and murder all the staff. Really, stop with all the crazy comparisons to terrorism or Nazis. It's absurd.

With that you just lost any reason for anyone to take you seriously. No you said plenty of women were ok with it. I am pointing out that plenty were not. If what you said is valid then you have to give me a percentage of women in professional fields who think it's ok as opposed to sexist. If you had bothered to do any research on this particular issue you would have found that many took great offence to it and their views not yours are what counts in this case. Because as I keep saying - it's up to the "insulted" party to decide if it's sexist or rascist.