Livegood118

Well, it's v5.0 of the game and it's probably not going to be getting any more patches. With all of the knowledge min-maxers now have, I'd like to pose a challenge for character builders: What's the most effective single class Paladin character you can build? The conventional wisdom is that Paladins should generally be multi-classed. I'd like to read an outline for a single class Paladin build that makes me think: "Damn, I'd definitely pick that over a Herald, or an Arcane Knight". Feel free to use equipment, party synergies, mass PL stacking, defence stacking, ability quirks etc ... but it shouldn't be game-breakingly cheesy (i.e. Salvation of time shenanigans) and it shouldn't require you to do anything on a regular basis that's annoying or extremely gamey (like making yourself confused, relying on a specific rest buff, that sorta thing). Who will answer the call?

OK great that makes sense now. It would be interesting to see some sums on hard data from creatures stats on POTD in the game. Still not totally convinced for spells, though I'll look out more often now Something else I've been mulling over is that it may actually not be worth debuffing enemies in a lot of cases if you can just cast the spell you'd originally planned on casting twice. Guess it depends on the circumstances / how much bang for your buck you get for teammates from the debuff.

Is the argument here that the general ratio of PC / NPC's accuracy vs. enemy defences later in the game tilts more favourably towards the former? As such, if you add accuracy, less misses are becoming grazes and less grazes are becoming hits etc ... I think that argument intuitively makes sense for characters that attack with weapons (e.g. +15 accuracy from legendary, +10 from skills), but for spellcasters I'm not quite so sure?

Maybe I'm a bit thick and not getting something here: Can someone explain to me why +3 accuracy becomes less valuable later in the game? I appreciate that +3 accuracy is a smaller relative percentage of your overall accuracy in later parts of the game (e.g. +3 accuracy is an additional +10% if you have 30 accuracy, but is only an additional 5% if it brings 60 accuracy to 63 accuracy). However, in an absolute sense the bonus remains the same irrespective of your existing accuracy (it's still +3 Accuracy). Ultimately, where any additional accuracy bonus puts you on the accuracy equation (from miss to graze to hit to crit) compared to where you otherwise would have been without the bonus seems to be what really matters here rather than accuracy as a relative percentage? Additionally, it would seem to me that considerations arise from the kinds of things you're using your accuracy for, and the extent to which something might be affected by accuracy swings. So for example, if you're casting a wall spell you're not going to care if 2/40 ticks miss. But if you miss a fireball two times because the accuracy equation swung against you, that's a bigger deal.

OK so I did a bit more thinking about this, and I think spell schools are quite relevant. Here are most of the "Good" offensive spells from each school that aren't buffs, summons or summoned weapons: Conjuration: Chill Fog, Binding Web, Wall of Flame, Wall of Draining Enchanting: Expose Vulnerabilities Illusion: Dazzling Lights, Miasma of Dull Mindedness, Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, Gaze of the Adragan, Wall of Many Colours, Freezing Rake Transmutation: Slicken, Combusting Wounds, Arcane Dampener, Pull of Eora Bitter Mooring, Freezing Pillar Evocation: Lots of them! Particularly, the big two Level 9s - Meteor Shower and Salvo Now, accuracy is much less relevant for Pulsing AoEs because they repeatedly re-apply themselves and can also be stacked pretty easily. Same principle applies with wall spells - the swinginess from decreased accuracy is less of a concern. If we take pulsing spells and wall spells out of the equation that leaves: Expose Vulnerabilities, Dazzling Lights, Miasma of Dull Mindedness, Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, Gaze of the Adragan, Freezing Rake, Combusting Wounds, Arcane Dampener, Bitter Mooring So it's effectively a choice between +3 accuracy with these spells, or +2 Dex and much more effective Evocation spells (including +1 accuracy from +PL) overall. Seems like Firethrower gloves win on balance then if you're guiding principle is that if something's dead it doesn't need to be CCd.

Is it correct to measure the value of accuracy through relative percentages? My thinking was along the lines that the value of accuracy can only really be determined through reference to the defences of enemies you encounter, and possibly the kinds of spells you're using and the extent to which grazes / hits / crits have effects on those spells. Accuracy is always naturally more effective against tough enemies that have high defences. OTOH I can see how the firethrower gloves would possibly give a more consistent benefit over time.

Firethrower Gloves: +2 Dex, +2 Explosives, +1 Arcana, +1 Evocation Power levels Gauntlets of Accuracy: +3 Accuracy Thoughts?

I'd have to say I find Wizards very strong from the beginning to the end of the game. Really don't agree with some of the sentiment shared in this thread. Versatility is power. Having the right tool for every situation is incredibly useful. Great spells that apply almost every good CC affliction in the game for long duration (AoE Daze, Blind, Immobile, Paralyze, Petrify, Terror). Combusting wounds + Wall of Fire melts anything not resistant / immune to fire from beginning to end. Mass disruption for any kind of enemy through Slickens and Pull of Eora. Infinite Buff extension through draining wall. Arcane Dampener. Biggest nukes in the game. Even low - mid level nukes remain really strong through stacking PLs. Make yourself invincible through buffs. Or through invisibility. Reflect enemy spells. Extra spells for days through grimoire of vaporous wizardry + rekvu's helm + empower restore skills (gives you 2 skills back when you do it with grimoire of vaporous wizardry).

lmao that sucks

Hi - sorry to thread necro. Just wanted to check if it's definitely the case that wall of draining doesn't work like it used to?

Hi - quick question. Is there any mechanical benefit to empowering Woedica in PoE 1 for a character in PoE2? I think I remember reading somewhere that it gives your character a power level boost but now I'm looking online and I don't see anything about it

This is definitely doable with at least one DB Fireball. A second might not give your Wizard time to get away.

Agree with 1. I'm really not sure what the hell I'm supposed to use Delayed Blast Fireball for. Sort of disagree of with 2 - I think it's OK that classes have a few damage types that they're really good at and some they're weaker at. For example, the Wizard is strong in Fire, Frost, Missiles but not quite as proficient in raw, lightning, poison, corrode. Otherwise class diversity would potentially be undermined - think about the effect you're proposing would have on the usefulness of the Druid vis a vis the Wizard, for example. Disagree with 3. Other than against Dorudugan, my Wizard was invaluable vs. every megaboss. In these fights for every character in your squad you really need to be using everything you have at your disposal. In the case of a Wizard, this means using Brilliant, Wizard self-buffs and a range of buffs from elsewhere in combination with Wall of Draining for (effectively) infinite duration (similar approach needed with Priest + salvation of time). Bel-Ranga's Deflection and Reflex get to acceptable levels as the fight progresses, Auranic's defences aren't the issue in her fight and Haunai has lowish deflection and reflex which also get better as the fight progresses. I haven't found penetration to be an issue on any of the megabosses apart from Dorudugan whose whole shtick is that no class can really do good damage to him and you have to whittle him down over time.

I can't think of any encounter like this off the top of my head. There are enemies which will be strong vs. both by having general high DR, but generally speaking you won't find fire immunes and frost immunes in the same place (Beast of Winter probably contains a few exceptions)

TBH I'm not seeing the issue here for the wizard. When something has immunity or a strong resistance to fire it will invariably be weak to frost and vice versa. The Wizard can dish out the most frost damage of any class in the game (perhaps playing second fiddle to a single classed chanter with eld nary) among other damage types including crush, pierce, acid and raw. The difference between a fire specced wizard (Sun and Moon, Magran's favour, Otto Scarcat) and a frost-specced Wizard (Sun and Moon, Griffins Blade) is really only an 8hour wait and a weapon switch away - the majority of other PL bonuses will be damage type neutral. Echoing boroer, I also have had relatively few issues with Wizard penetration on POTD. By mid-level there's no reason why your wizard shouldn't be nomming crusted-swordfish most rests (wait 26 hours for ingredients to restock). Stacking PL and getting the relevant penetration talents also helps.

Thank you so much for this - it's really helpful. So, in practice, is it accurate to say that the "true" damage of combusting wounds can calculated by doing the following: (1) Take the total damage listed in the tooltip and divide it by two (finds the "per tick" damage) (2) Calculate the total number of ticks (1 per 3 seconds) and add a tick to account for the "0 second" tick (3) Multiple tick damage by the number of ticks. So, hypothetically, if the combusting wounds damage tooltip indicated it was doing 10 damage over 18 seconds, in practice it would be doing 10/2 = 5 damage per tick, over 18/3 + 1 = 7 ticks, for a total of 5 * 7 = 35 damage total per proc. It also seems like combusting wounds seems to benefit "twice" from additional PL, as it will increase the accuracy, duration, area and penetration of the initial spell cast, as well as the damage and duration of any subsequent procs. I'm still not quite getting this. When you say "Each meteor targets one unit", do you mean either: - there is a finite number of meteors that will fall down within the large AoE every 3 seconds, and, assuming enough units are present within the large AoE as there are meteors, each meteor will target one of the units (If there are more units than meteors, I assume the meteors are allocated to units at random)? or - one meteor will hit each unit within the large AOE per three seconds? I assume it's the former rather than the latter, as the latter would seem to run contrary to my experience of using an empowered meteor shower vs. Bel-Ranga and taking off about 50% of her health. Either way I can see how units being clumped together would drastically increase the power of the spell. Meteor shower also seems to really benefits from power level, gaining damage, accuracy, duration, penetration, area (and maybe number of meteors per 3 secs?). Meteor shower definitely can't be spell-shaped - I know that much!

It's really confusing how the damage works tbh. Maybe I'm imagining things but it seems like a lot of combusting wounds' ticks get merged in to big ticks every so often - when I do a combusting wounds/wall of fire combo I'll often see three digit figures come up. It'd be great to actually know how much damage each proc is doing. Maybe I'm not reading the tooltip correctly, but I don't understand why enemies being close together would affect the damage output of meteor shower? Does each meteor that lands have a 1.5m radius? Is there a set number of meteors per cast?

Can anyone here tell me how combusting wounds' damage calculation works? Normally when you have a DOT it'll be [x] damage per [Y] seconds, total duration [z]. However, combusting wounds seems to just be [x] damage over duration [x] per proc with no per [Y] seconds tick component. This would seem to indicate that intellect only stretches out the length of time in which damage occurs without increasing damage (unless I'm missing something that's not clear from the tooltip?). I suppose what I would like to know is if a character has 20 Might, 20 Int and no other modifiers triggers a combusting wounds hit , how much damage occurs? Also, what role, if any, does Armour rating play in mitigating the effect?

Never thought about using brilliant and wall of draining!

Just wondering what everyones views are on the best way to use these ? IMO ordinary weapons don't really seem like the best use, as a lot of the time if you need to penetrate something it'll be more effective just switching weapon and getting a different damage type. I don't see the +1 Pen from mythic making much of a difference here. Where mythic might be very useful on weapons is a ranged Cipher? A mythic Frostfall and mythic Essence Interrupter seems like a strong combo. If your Cipher isn't penetrating enough to do decent damage and isn't getting focus they're a waste of a party slot. Heavy armour seems like a really good candidate for Mythic to get AR stacked nice and high. If you can get everything you're fighting down to 25% Pen it doesn't matter what your Pen is because you're going to outlast them so long as you have a bit of sustain. Shields seem like a big no-no for mythic. +2 deflection is meh.

Idk. Once I’ve gotten access to brilliant I’ve never had issues with resource generation. To me, at high levels, in a party that has easy access to brilliant inspiration, the difference between a blood mage and a standard wizard is a constant +1 power levels from blood sacrifice vs. access to Empower. My gut is telling me, particularly with empower talents, that the pure wizard probably wins out in the end. Edit: Also, I just finished reading your very helpful thread on power levels I kinda “get” now why people might feel the +1PL from the nature godlike is worth it. Had no idea PL scaling affected the base damage/duration rather than just being another additive value.

I suppose I should say that in long fights, without another party member that can refresh resources, the Blood Mage would seem to come out on top both in terms of their sustain and in terms of spell spamming abilities. Also - I'm not really convinced by the benefits of the nature Godlike for a few reasons: - In the early to mid-game, Rekvu's Casque (+1 all spell casts with Vaporous Grimoire) or Thaos Headdress (+5 accuracy vs. flanked) + afflictions resistance would seem to outweigh + 1 PL - In the mid to late game, +10 accuracy to all mind and body afflictions cast by the Wizard (Helm of White Void) + affliction resistance seems to outweigh +1 PL

Ok thanks for the views everyone. So do you think it's fair to summarise the sub-class choices as follows? Blood Mage - Strongest versatility early to mid game, equivalent versatility to pure Wizard late game - Unique ability provides the most benefits (sustain, repeat casting of same spell) in early to mid game, but becomes less relevant once Brilliant/Resource refreshing abilities become available and casting level 8/9 spells become priorities - Works well in a multi-class, particularly as a martial multi - May accidentally kill self - Consideration should be given to having other party members or choosing a multi-class choice to heal and diminish negative effects of blood sacrifice - Passive health restore a nice perk - Least potential for "burst damage" of the three options in mid to late game (No Empower), though only option that can spam the same spell over and before before resource refreshing abilities become available from other party members - Discrepancy in damage from less power-casting abilities vs. Evoker might be compensated for against enemies that aren't fire resistant through combusting wounds Evoker - Least versatility of the three options. Loses access to important protection spells (e.g. Minoletta Sigil), other nice spells like slicken, combusting wounds and chill fog and spells that are super useful vs. other spellcasters (arcane Dampener, wall of draining, arcane cleanse). - Strongest "Power-caster" and strongest potential for burst damage - Unique ability (+2 PL, 15% Echo) provides value on a consistent basis throughout the game - Works best as a single class - Doesn't have the sustain of a blood mage in early to mid game, but once Brilliant/Resource refreshing abilities this becomes irrelevant. Equivalent sustain to pure Wizard. Pure Wizard - Strong versatility (Blood Mage stronger versatility early to mid game) - Weakest "power caster" until high levels, where being able to empower means pure wizard beats out Bloodmage. Bloodmage beats it in low to mid levels through resource refreshing and spell spam (but is weaker once resource refreshing/level 8/9 spells become a priority). Will never be as good a powercaster as Evoker. - Discrepancy in damage from less power-casting abilities vs. Evoker might be compensated for against enemies that aren't fire resistant through combusting wounds - Works best as pure class but also very good in multis. - Doesn't have the sustain of a blood mage in early to mid game. Once Brilliant/Resource refreshing abilities become available this becomes irrelevant.

Just wondering what peoples' views are on the issues in the title? Wizard Subclasses I feel like the current limitations on spell selections for specialist Wizards and the recovery penalty don't seem to outweigh the loss of access to two spell schools? Is losing access to Transmutation (Combusting Wounds, Slicken, Arcane Dampener, Arcane Cleanse, Pull of Eora) and Conjuration (Chill Fog, Arcane Veil, Wall of Flame, Spirit Lance, Wall of Draining, Piercing Sigil) on an Evoker really worth the +2PL for evocation spells, the 15% echo effect and the 10% recovery penalty to non-evocation spells? Maybe Evokers are really good? e.g. +2 Evoker Bonus, +1 Nature Godlike, +2 Magran's Favour, +2 Sun and Moon, +1 Evocation Gloves, +2 Potion of Ascension, +5 Empower = +15PL to a Fire spell, with the 15% echo chance, which seems kinda nuts. How does Blood Mage compare to pure Wizard? Blood Mage seems like it definitely has the edge, although maybe empower with the empower talents later in the game makes pure Wizard worth it from the long term perspective? Resources aren't ever an issue once you have access to brilliant. Nature Godlike vs. Helmet + Racial Thoughts on this welcome. The only helmets that would seem to make it worth it imo are Helm of the White Void, Thaos's Headdress and Rekvu's Fractured Casque. Racials seem useful in terms of getting extra affliction resistance.

Downed him - didn't end up using Grog because I'd know I'd 100% lose characters to his fireballs. For posterity's sake and future Googlers, a number of things helped out. The key thing is that the knockdown effect of Magnetic Overdrive can be nullified by giving characters concentration. I gave my herald PC and Ydwin the push/pull immune effect items (Horn of the Aurochs, Captain's Belt) which meant magnetic overdrive did jack to them. Using the level 5 cipher power that gives resolute, I made sure everyone else that could be pulled had concentration. For the three characters that didn't have push/pull immunity, a combination of various skills/items such as Deleterious Alacrity (Nimble), Nomad's Brigandine (Immune to disengagement attacks!), Smoke Veil (untargetable), Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (untargetable) and Escape meant that I could either avoid getting pulled in or completely nullify disengagement attacks. Where possible, I tried to line my characters up behind Chanter skeletons to bodyblock as well for extra safety (if I remember correctly I was able to avoid the AoE fire from magnetic overdrive by doing this as well). After that it was a simple case of beating him down as I had for the first half of the fight, although you have to be very careful after 50% health for nasty ability combinations. One time he dropped fireballs immediately after using magnetic overdrive - could have been curtains if I didn't get lucky with where they went. In the end I think I enjoyed Dorudugan. The early frustration was in not having a consistent strategy and having to do the whole bloody thing again after getting him to half health. Once you have a good strategy I found it quite fun/intense dodging the fireballs, volcano attacks, etc ... A lot of the fight is in positioning your characters properly. Zealous speed aura definitely helped with that and saved my ass a few times. Also - the 1st level missiles spell is great for keeping Hel Hyraf's fury up on him. 9 autohits means you get a good extra 20-25 seconds. Just spam that 20-30 times with brilliant and you shouldn't have any trouble keeping Hel Hyrafs on for the whole fight.