Livegood118

Hmm ... my understanding was that the reason Dex has less relative effectiveness is because the 5 frame delay after each attack->recovery animation becomes a greater and greater portion of the overall action, such that it was never a true 3% reduction in the first place. So, if we take a hypothetical example and say 10 actions are performed in a 10 second period and each second is 30 frames. That's 300 frames overall, 50 of which are irreducable 5 frame delays and 250 of which are actions/recovery. Dex only reduces this 250 portion. Let's then compare 19 Dex vs 20 Dex vs 21 Dex. 250/1.27 = 196.85, 250/1.3 = 192.3, 250/1.33 = 187.96 21 Dex = 62.04 Total Frames Saved 20 Dex = 57.7 Total Frames Saved 19 Dex = 53.15 Total Frames Saved 19 Dex -> 20 Dex = 4.55 extra frames saved 20 Dex -> 21 Dex = 4.34 extra frames saved It's a pretty minuscule difference and probably more noticeable in the lower dex ranges. My understanding was that, based on the above, you look at the total number of frames reduces per each point invested in dex. I haven't sat in a maths class in nearly eleven years though so I'm not sure ^^ Yeah - looking at the numbers, if Res gave +5 concentration it seems like there'd be a very arguable case for it, but with so much readily available crowd control spells and cheap means of increasing concentration I think Dex is probably better off overall. Of course dumping res if you've got a melee char is a big no-no.

I've found that generating wounds on a Monk is a problem in the very late game if you've got a Cipher that uses Defensive Mindweb in your party. Normally, if you want to generate wounds, all you have to do is engage and disengage from enemies very quickly and you'll have some in no time. It can be a little bit of a problem if you've already CCd everyone, but if they're already all CCd then they're good as dead anyway imo.

This implies that the Fighter is attacking slower than the Monk, yet your calculations assume the Fighter has the better speed coefficient so this is wrong. What you actually determine is this. Assuming that 30 frames is a second (which I believe it is, or near enough) you've determined that your Monk attacks once ever 1.33s and your Fighter attacks every 1.17s. This actually means that the Fighter attacks 1.14 times as fast as the Monk, or in terms without decimals, for every 7 attacks the Monk makes the Fighter makes 8. EDIT: another thing, your numbers for Lighting Strikes, Turning Wheel and Weapon Lash are all too high for the Monk (they should be 10, 20/10 and 10 respectively) reducing the Monks attacks by 8/6 for the ten wound and five wound variants respectively. I assumed that the Monk had taken Scion of Flame and Heart of the Storm for Turning Wheel + Lightning Strikes/Weapon Lash respectively, increasing the lashes to 0.6 and 0.3 You're right on the attack speed thing, I got them mixed up: Fighter Attacks 40 times for every 35 of the Monk's Attacks, edit or 8/7 as you point out.

I actually forgot about the potion ^^ Let's take an example and say you've got a melee character that's going to get hit 35 times in a fight and you've got a character that has 16 dex/10 res vs 10 dex/16 res. Let's assume the "average" interrupt rating on the hits is 0.5 secs and that the enemy attacking has 15 Per: d100 + interrupt vs 75 + Conc x + 15 vs 75 x = 60 = 40% chance of interrupt on hit for 10 res char x + 15 vs 75 + 18 x + 15 vs 93 x = 78% = 22% chance of getting interrupted per hit for 16 res char Assume 35 hits 35*0.4 = 14 Interrupts = 14*0.5 = 7 35*0.22 = 8 Interrupts = 8*0.5 = 4 So, 6 points of dex in to resolve means you get an extra 3 seconds of time in the fight, and you also can't discount the extra +6 deflection that'd help you avoid a few hits as well. My feeling is that it's probably not worth the trade ...?

Did some quick maths. An Average hit from Tidefall on a Monk with 10 Wounds is: 24% (Base Might) + 45% (Superb) + 20% (Savage Attack) + 18% (Might items/boosts) + 15% (Apprentice Sneak) + 15% (Two Handed Style) = 137% 14 – 20 * 2.37 = 33 – 47.4 AVG hit = 40 unmodified 20 (Torment’s Reach) 24 (Turning W) 10 (Wounding) 12 (Wep Lash) 12 (LS) = 118 average damage vs 0 DR (98 No Torments Reach) = 118 - 10 - 10 = 98 vs 10 DR (80.5 No Torments Reach) = 118 - 20 - 20 = 78 vs 20 DR (63 No Torments Reach) = 118 - 30 - 30 = 58 vs 30 DR (45.5 No Torments Reach) Recovery Mod = .25 (Swift Strikes) * .15 (Durgan) *.15 (Gloves of Swift Action) = 1.65, + durganised plate armor = 1.3 The same with five wounds is: AVG hit = 40 unmodified 20 (Torment’s Reach) 12 (Turning W) 10 (Wounding) 12 (Wep Lash) 12 (LS) = 106 vs 0 DR (86 Torment's Reach) = 106 - 10 - 10 = 86 vs 10 DR (68.5 No Torments Reach) = 106 - 20 - 20 = 66 vs 20 DR (51 No Torments Reach) = 106 - 30 - 30 = 46 vs 30 DR (33.5 No Torments Reach) Then for an Offence specced Fighter: 24% (Base Might) + 45% (Superb) + 20% (Savage Attack) + 18% (Might items/boosts) + 15% (Apprentice Sneak) + 15% (Two Handed Style) +15 (Wep Spec) + 10% (Wep Mastery) = 162% Apply Confident Aim to base: 14*1.2 = 17 17 – 20 * 2.62 = 44.54 – 52.43 Avg hit = 48.5 unmodified 12 (Weapon Lash) 10 (Wounding) = 70.5 vs 0 DR = 70.5 - 10 - 2.5 = 58 vs 10 DR = 70.5 - 20 - 5 = 45.5 vs 20 DR = 33 vs 30 DR Recovery = 1.33 (Sanguine Plate) * 1.15 (Durgan Weapon) * 1.15 (Gloves Swift Action) = 1.76 Recovery Mod (+.2 for Armoured Grace) (-.35 Durganised Armour) = 1.6 So, let's assume both are wearing Durganised Plate Armour and have 15 Dex attack_duration = base_attack_duration / dex_coef recovery_duration = attack_duration / recovery_factor * max(0, 1 - 2 * speed_coef) 30/1.15 = 26 frame attack 26 * max(0, 1 - 2 *0.6) /1,2 = 4.33 +5 frame recovery = Fighter Attacks every 35 Frames 30/1.15 = 26 frame attack 26 * max(0, 1 -2 *0.3) /1.2 = 8.67 + 5 Frame Recovery = Monk Attacks every 40 Frames So, fighter hits 35 times for every time the monk hits 40 times. Draw whatever conclusions you want from this. I'm not 100% certain about the attack speed math. Monk seems to do more damage with the 2h'er just auto-attacking, assuming you've got some wounds and turning wheel/lightning strikes. With Torments reach he seems to be the clear winner. The maths doesn't take in to account accuracy/crits/grazes but between fighters and monks they're mostly on par in that respect.

In terms of party composition I always like to go for three passive characters (fighters/barbarians/chanters/paladins/monk on AI/Ranger) and then three active characters (everything else) so the micro doesn't get too ridiculous. All that being said, an aggressive chanter will probably bring more to a party than a Paladin (though it can be a little bit slow up to level 9). Through Ancient Memory/Beloved Spirits Chanters will probably bring more healing to the party anyway. However, Paladins can be used to great effect as well, for example Boroer's Counselor Ploi build (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/89995-class-build-counselor-ploi-charming-paladin-supporter-tank/). Kind Wayfarers, Darcozzis and Shieldbearers are probably the best dudes to have around imo because of their on-hit kill and flames of devotion synergy talents. I've always found focusing on flames of devotion for damage only isn't great ... edit: At level 13 all paladins eventually got Sacred Immolation, which is kind of like Dragon Thrashed. Doesn't do as much damage but is still good.

Thanks again. I was just wondering – are you working towards creating some kind of calculator utility/spreadsheet to work all this out?

Hi all, I was wondering if someone with some math skills could help me work out the value of concentration in combat, particularly as it pertains to investments in resolve vs other attributes. Everyone still around here is a grog so let's all assume we're playing on POTD Concentration in Pillars can be gained from a number of different sources, the three main ones being the Resolve attribute (+3 per point), the Holy Meditation spell (+30, long duration) and Crowns for the Faithful (+75). The Interrupt mechanic works as follows: – Target must land at least a graze – Roll d100 + Attacker's Interrupt Rating (+0 on Hit / -25 on Graze / +25 on Crit) vs Concentration + 75 To start with, a few observations: – Concentration seems to decrease in worth relative to increases in a character's absolute defence (Deflection, Fort, Reflex, Will). If you're not getting hit at all, there can't be a concentration check. – Concentration seems to decrease in worth the less a character is hit/targetted overall. Meaning, if you've got a good front line that can draw aggro, it seems wiser to invest in more offensive stats for backline casters/ranged characters than investing in resolve for the few times the character does get hit. – If a backline character with low concentration does get targeted, any investment in resolve for concentration/deflection may not be worth it anyway because you'll probably be getting crit at least 50% of the time anyway unless you switch to a hatchet/good shield. – Investments in resolve can increase overall durability, and hence damage in a fight, since under certain circumstances a character would survive attacks that they otherwise would not have survived had the character made an investment in resolve. – Of course the corollary of the above is also true in certain circumstances, meaning that if you'd killed a dude faster as a result of investments in more offensive attributes, you wouldn't have had to have invested in resolve in the first place. So, let's look at a dual fist Monk build: 18 Might 12 Con 16 Dex 10 Per 12 Int 10 Res Monks are naturally going to get hit a lot when dual wielding. They've got decent base deflection, good endurance and great health but with dual wielding you're never going to get high enough deflection to not take a load of hits on POTD. Monks always want high Might because of the way that lashes work. Like almost any melee class in PoE, Veterans recovery is a decent talent to take and it scales with both Might and Intellect, so because of that you can trade some Con for these stats, gaining bonuses to Torment's Reach AoE at the same time (though the loss of Fortitude sucks a bit ...) For this kind of build, what I'm wondering is if you took the points that you've invested in Dexterity and put them in to Resolve instead (+18% Action Speed vs +18 Concentration), could you hypothetically do more damage by virtue of the fact that you aren't getting interrupted? Here's another example of a Barbarian Build for 2h/DW with 74 attribute points spent: 16 Might 10 Con 10 Dex 10 Per 18 Int 10 Res Now, normally you'd probably want to spend your last four attribute points in Dexterity for an extra 12% action speed, but are there circumstances where investing those in to resolve could actually lead to more damage? We know from MaxQuest's attack speed research (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72272-combat-mechanics-attack-speed-recovery/) that Dexterity gives diminishing returns with more points invested so 10 to 16/17 is kind of the sweet spot. From anecdotal experience, I would say that Monks and Barbarians get interrupted at least 20 times a fight in the early game. Let's assume that these are "average" interrupts for 0.5 seconds. If you never got interrupted at all you could gain at least 10 seconds of time attacking. Of course, in realty, with 5/6 points investment in resolve that would have otherwise gone in to Dexterity, I guess you might only save 2-3 seconds. Hypothetically though, couldn't this pay off offensively more than investing in Dex? I don't know is the answer, so I'm looking forward to hearing what people think. edit: fixed equation

I thought it was only Novice's Suffering that suffered from crits/grazes being almost irrelevant and that the bonus damage from Transcendent Suffering counted as base damage and thus benefited a lot from % modifiers. I don't think this is right sorry – last time I remember asking about this I think Loren Tyr said that it had changed and that transcendant suffering doesn't count as +base damage and is only affected by might. Long Pain still increases with base damage per level. Edit: found Loren's post - https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88596-barbarian-novice-suffering/?p=1834589

Yeah, throw me in with the folks that say Perception gives you the bigger bonus when it actually matters (tough foes). Outside of weird circumstances where crits/grazes don't really matter much, like a monk hitting with their fists or something like that, I always like to have high perception. Something that should also be taken in to account is how crits interact with crowd-control spells. For damage, all you'll get from a crit is a % of the base damage of whatever attack/ability you're using, which for one handed weapons is around an extra five damage or thereabouts. But, for crowd control spells, a crit multiplies the total amount of time you CC the foe by 1.5. So, let's say you cast an 8 second CC spell with 25 INT and score a hit: 8 * 1.75 = 14 seconds Now, if you do the same with a crit, you get: 8 * 1.75 * 1.5 = 21 seconds Which is a huge difference and is like getting an extra free cast of the base spell again. The effects get more and more ridiculous with longer durations (a 12 second CC spell crit would = 12 * 1.75 * 1.5 = 31.5) As others have said, resolve is pretty great too and its effects on DPS – especially for characters that are on the front lines – shouldn't be discounted. A character that walks the line between being a tank/damage dealer that stays alive longer and doesn't get interrupted will do more damage than a char with an extra 15% base damage from might. I suppose the concentration aspect of resolve becomes less important as deflection increases though.

It's applied to the attack phase, and then the recovery phase is based off this modified attack phase, so it's there but a little hidden. Ahh gotcha - thanks

Thanks for this. I was looking at the equations and I can't seem to find where the Dexterity co-efficient is applied to the recovery bonus though

It's so hard to beat the damage output of a decently specced Dragon-Thrashed Chanter. With 25 Might, 25 Intellect against a 16 DR target a hit will do: 14.5 vs DR*.25 + 14.5 vs DR*.25 per tick 10.5/10.5 damage per tick = 21 damage per tick Duration = 4 + 4*1.75 = 11 Seconds (=4.66 Ticks) 21*4.66 = 97.86 damage (Graze = 73.5 damage, Crit = 123.5 Damage) And that's triggered passively every four seconds in a massive radius. So tasty. After 12 seconds you'll be doing approximately 22-24 damage a second assuming all hits. Seven Nights She Waited is absolutely crazy as well against targets that you can hit multiple times. I'm pretty sure you can get four hits in on some dudes but if we say you get three hits with 25 Might (+45%), Secrets of Rime (+20%), Champions Boon (+30%), Flanked Bonus from Phantom Foes (+30%) and the crit talents (+1.9 damage on crits): Damage increase = 125% 45 – 60 *2.25 = 101.25 – 135 Range of Damage assume no graze = 303.75 – 405 minus DR*3 Range of Damage assume all crits = 425.25 – 526.5 minus DR*3 All crits is easily achievable with petrify and you'll get an extra damage bonus there too. RIP Dragons (who I think you can get four hits on). Can churn this out every 12-13 seconds with a high level Chanter. Nothing else in the Chanter's arsenal really compares to these two in terms of damage unless you're getting very creative with White Worms Writhed. Such a great class - makes D&D bards look like a toddler

I've tried other Chanter builds but I've never found them particularly impressive. A 1H high dex-per-int killers froze stiff build as described above sounds like it could be pretty damn good if taken to completion/optimised further. One of the main conceptual problems I have in making other chanter builds is that they are just so damn good at tanking it feels a waste to do anything else with them. Sure, they've got low endurance, but the manner in which their offensive abilities work means you can can tank dex and don't need to take any offensive talents (unless you want to take secrets of rime to beef up you're seven nights she waited, but this also has a defensive component), meaning you can focus solely on beefing up defence.

Some spells are naturally going to be better than other spells, but it's important to remember how resources are managed in the background, as well as the fact that new abilities have to be presented to characters to meet new challenges and finally the need for enemies to have Wizard Abilities. Let's take one example - Bewildering Spectacle (Level 2) and Confusion (Level 4). Confusion is superior to bewildering spectacle in every way so given the choice between using one of the two you'll naturally want to use Confusion. However, at lower levels, you don't have the option to choose confusion, so Bewildering Spectacle is all you've got. Naturally, you'll probably want to spec Bewildering Spectacle out of your grimoire as the game progresses – or maybe you don't want to use a 4th level slot for confusion, so keep Bewildering Spectacle. It's only natural really that as the game progresses the player wants to get new swanky abilities - there's only so many different kinds of effects in the game so naturally there's going to be a bit of overlap here. Finally, because there are enemy wizards in the game, it's necessary to give them abilities. Most of them, I suspect, were not intended to make it in to the player's grimoire - or if they were - the player would have to be a pretty good to us them (I'm thinking about stuff like dazzling lights here etc ...)

Tada! https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90437-is-there-a-comprehensive-list-of-poisondisease-attacks/?p=1864176

Yeah, I mean it's not like you have to use QS at the start of every fight, but it's great for those "oh **** I don't have any focus and I need to CC quickly" moments. I guess to that extent maybe they shouldn't be considered mutually exclusive as suggested above.

I'd take quickswitch over greater focus any day of the week. Better to blow someone's face off with an arquebus at the start of the fight, get some damage in and have more focus than you would have had had you taken greater focus.

Just curious - have you tried quickswitching Arquebuses with the build? I feel like this would be a fairly effective way of getting much needed focus.

Draining definitely shouldn't be discounted but I'd prefer not getting hit at all and not getting interrupted than doing a bit more damage but taking more damage and having to drain my endurance back, which of course brings up health concerns again. Maybe purgatory's a good pick?

Don't quote me on this, but I think debuffs on enemies work the same as buffs to your party. So, for example, if your priest casts armour of faith on your dudes (+4 General DR) and then a Druid casts Form of the Delemgan (+8 to specific types of DR), you'll get +12 DR against the the specific types that Delemgan protects against and +4 to everything else. Sundering Blow is -8 to general damage reduction on the enemy as a debuff so if you wanted to stack it with something else it'd have to be a debuff that reduces DR of a specific type. I think scalebreaker reduces general DR.

Also - assume that the lower of the characters two class's base deflection and accuracy apply.

You're optimal!

Hi all, As you probably know, Josh Sawyer is on the record saying that they're thinking about introducing some form of multiclassing in PoE 2. What crazy builds are you going to make under the new system? I'm assuming it's going to work according to D&D 3rd edition rules rather than 2nd edition, so please make suggestions with the following assumptions: – At level up, you can level up in one of two classes – You can choose to level a class at any level (e.g. Fighter 9 > Wizard 1->2->3 > Fighter 10) – Assume a level cap of level 22 to start with, though it'll prolly be higher in the real thing. – Assume all class's innate abilities are all affected by scaling to some extent. For example, Sneak attack might start at 30%, then increase by 7-8% per level invested in Rogue. Likewise, Carnage damage starts off much smaller/lower damage but gets better and its area gets wider with more investment. – Who knows what's going to happen with spellcasting classes after they get 8th level spells? 9th Level Spells? Spellmaking...!?

I don't really see a need to use anything other than a 2H once you've got defensive mindweb and providing you've got a good tank in your party. Just quickswitch Arquebus for the initial focus for it and then go hog wild. I'd almost say it's more much optimal at that stage than ranged Cipher.