bob54386

My PC monk had the highest DPS in the party by about a factor of 4. Other characters were Eder(Full Tank), Aloth, Pellegrina wielding justice + retaliation plate armor, Durance, and hired blunderbuss rogue on a normal playthrough. I went greatsword monk for a little while, but the attack speed was really slow. Switching it back to fists I was hitting for 15-30 on a ridiculously fast attack speed. I was perma-interrupting some casters. I went for heavy armor for the first half the game until I had enough of a deflection and health pool that he wasn't losing much endurance in a fight. Switched to exceptional leather armor and then exceptional robe when available. Useful traits are: -swift strikes (upgrade to lighting strikes seemed like it was only doing 1% bonus dmg instead of 10%) -Turning Wheel (1 wound = 5% bonus burn dmg, up to a cap of +50%) -Vulnerable Attack (5DR melee dmg pierce at a slight attack speed penalty) -Two Weapon Style The bottom two helped immensely. Vulnerable attack would probably be the most helpful of the 4 in early game.

The player doesn't choose to be related to sarevok, to kill Irenicus' sister, or to be a bhaalspawn. Those are all equivalent to past life stories since they happen before the game's events. Sure, they happened in the same lifetime, but in terms of player agency there is no meaningful distinction. Also true of TNO in Torment - all backstory told through past lives that define a relationship with the final boss. (You also don't get much face time with TTO in Torment, either, come to think of it...) Not that I wouldn't have loved me some more Thaos, but I thought it was nice that for once the plot wasn't "bad guy wants to hunt down and kill the player because he's special." In fact in your early run ins with him, he seems to recognize you and maybe show mercy? That was my read, anyway. The real antagonist for most of the game is the player's own awakened soul. So it's more hero vs. self if anything. So.... why do we need to kill Thaos?

To Thaos we were just another peon. To Sarevok we were some mofuggin kin who just wrecked all his plans and needed to be murdered ASAP. To Irenicus we were some mofuggin bhaalspawn who killed his sister and had the last part of the soul he needs. It would've been nice if the final moments gave a little more thought to the life in progress and didn't dedicate the climax 100% to events that we had very little to do with. The present life was trivialized by the previous life's story. Interesting writing style as far as role playing goes, probably would've benefited from Thaos having a bigger presence / making it more personal.

You can expand it if you click on the line. Hovering the mouse over the sub-lines will also give you the roll info.

Wizards probably have a solid chance of soloing endgame. At lvl 8 grab confuse and let the monsters do all your work for you. In a full party normal playthrough, Aloth single handedly turned around a couple of fights I was stuck reloading with that one skill. Otherwise +1 to cipher for charm and buff/ debuff abilities. About to give a solo monk easy playthrough a try.

I think the health vs Endurance system is a lot more forgiving than the IE games. In Baldur's gate I'd usually reload if any of my companions got knocked out in a dungeon. In PoE, I couldn't always get the tanks to hold aggro, so plenty of folks got KO'd then stood back up after the fight. I cleared normal (completed all quests up to act 2, skipped most act 3 sidequests and Endless Paths) with tank monk PC, 1x hired rogue blunderbusser, 4x story npc. Found ~3 fights where I needed to reload repeatedly. Accuracy and deflection buffs / debuffs swing balance dramatically, but not many encounters had strong buffs/ debuffs going on. Not many encounters were attacking things other than deflection.

I'm sure AI's going to get a tune-up, the backer beta e-mail said the initial batch of AI instructions was inadequate and they're developing it further. Tactically, it's probably not worth talking about taunts until we get a wider variety of baddies than just melee critters. Monks are the only reason I would want to see a taunt in the game. They need someone attacking them to actually use abilities, and it would stink to have to attack them with party members. There are a probably a few options devs could pursue to get monks their wounds though -- a 'self inflicted wound' ability on a per encounter basis would probably make the most sense without dramatically changing things.

Where is the wound counter? I couldn't see any feedback telling me if or how many wounds my Monk had. Probably didn't know where to look, but appreciate any advice! Thanks Wound counter is under the character portrait

What's the health:stamina dmg taken ratio supposed to be for monks? I'm finding it's currently 1 health lost per 3 stamina lost. I was under the impression it was supposed to be 1:4.

Loading those attached saves actually introduced a few new bugs into my game; it was the first time I experienced the wizard's grimoire disappearing. Deleting all save files seems to have cleared up a bug where encounters weren't ending properly if I died really quickly.

After deleting my saves, I am unable to reproduce this easily. I suspect this is somehow tied into the general savegame issues. The first time it showed up was on my third character after the first couple characters had died.

I've always associated difficulty setting with bragging rights myself. I'd expect hard mode to force you to play particularly cautiously like that. I also agree that the trash mobs aren't terribly interesting to have to fight off. I'd float the idea that we should have an easy-medium hybrid difficulty where trash has easy spawnrates but meaningful fights have the 'normal' spawn. That would go with a normal-hard hybrid where again, trash mobs have normal spawns and meaningful encounters have the hard spawns. This kind of setup can't be accomplished with the current slider bar implementation since spawn sizes are determined on zoning.

Lemme put it this way... Too much stat importance = Every class will be forced into the same build and feel the same Too little stat importance = Every class will feel the same regardless of where points are put. We all want a balance of course. I'm simply asking would you rather learn towards a more difficult system that does have some extent of punishment for poorly planned builds (higher stat weight) or a system allowing for experimentation but with less meaning and purpose behind character customization. I think you're focused on the idea that some stats will always be preferable to others, and that the only way to adjust the system is to adjust the magnitude of their effect. If every stat is useful, then every point is useful no matter how you spend it -- that's how you keep bad builds from popping up. From a good design standpoint, you need both. Enough stat importance /magnitude that different stats change your playstyle, and enough balance between stats that you get reasonable benefit from each. Anything else is just a flawed system that we can still avoid at this point in the development process. My vote is both. Edit -- on rereading, it sounds like you're asking what side you want them to err on if they can't implement the ideal system. In that case, my vote is enough stat importance that some classes at least get a variety of playstyles. Maybe it won't affect all of them.

Not sure what your point about INT is in Fallout, I usually slapped on a powerfist and started punching people in the nuts until they fell unconscious. Not sure what that says about me in hindsight. As far as POE goes, I'm reading the OP's description of the poll as 'Attribute system has such a small impact on the character, it's really just an arbitrary display of numbers with a trivial impact on play' vs 'Attribute system is meaningful to how a class participates in a party'. I'm not sure what OP means by variety if variety means all characters of a given class are equivalent independent of stats. With the current system, I feel like interrupt could only be useful if you build for it, and concentration will only be useful in the specific situation that you're attacked by enemies with high interrupt. If someone could point me to a guide on interrupts so that I can amend this statement if need be, I'd appreciate it. The other 4 stats on the other hand are ubiquitously useful. 'Ubiquitously useful' stats vs 'situationally useful against enemies and AI that aren't in the beta' stats is the main difficulty I think the current system is running into. Time bar refresh rate, skill usage counts, and deflection are the replacement stats I've heard mentioned that sound like they would be competitive.

Sounds like people have decided the beta is easy with a 5 man party. I was wondering how far folks have gotten with smaller party sizes -- killing off the chars you don't want or just making them hang out in the background. Bonus points for using a stat build that involves Resolve and Perception. I'll start with my own PR, although I'm pretty sure I can top it on my next try: 1 monk managed to drop 3 lions, no resting. Not all at once of course