Infares

Priest +10 deity talent only gets them up to par with "Very High" accuracy classes, which are currently Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, and Monk. Currently I'd say ranged Wood Elf rogue with the above talents or melee rogue with Reckless Assault specced into Spears. Monks have this thing they can do where they take WF: Peasant and put a spear in their Off Hand, and though they only attack with the spear on auto-attacks, on their Full Attack skills they are treated as though they were dual wielding the spear with their right fist, both of which get the bonus for single wielding and the spear in the off hand of course gets +5 for being a spear, and they both get the +6 for Weapon Focus. That's +18 accuracy on the fist attack for the right hand when using skills and +23 on the offhand spear during auto attacks and during full attack skills.

Am I the only one laughing my ass off at the fact that people know my name for providing criticism and are also convinced I have some vendetta against Paladins because I provided criticism regarding how poor their numbers currently are? Like wtf people, seriously chill out. This is like the fourth person to flip out on me because omg I said Paladins aren't the best thing since sliced bread. Anyways to answer OP, it's not that they're horriawful and undoable, it's just that yes, I would frankly rank them dead last in regards to class rankings. You will never encounter a lost fight and think "I could've won that if I just had a paladin!" This doesn't mean however that Paladins cannot do fine, it's just more of a "if your goal is to be as powerful as possible, don't make a Paladin" sort of thing. Fighter. And that's exactly the problem. If given an ultimatum between Fighter and Paladin, you'll pick Fighter. If given an ultimatum between Priest and Paladin, you'll pick Priest. If given an ultimatum between Rogue and Paladin, you'll pick Rogue. Paladin is a jack-of-all-trades, king of none, but unfortunately it's skills in all respective areas are so sub-par that it's hard to justify picking Paladin if your interest is in a party being as efficient as possible. But if you already have a fighter, priest, rogue, and chanter, a Paladin makes all of the above do what they do better. AFIK paladin auras stack with Priest buffs, do they not? They're also always on.

Nah, both Average.

Something to consider for Durance is that as a priest of Magren, he has a special class talent that you can eventually select that gives him a +10 accuracy with Sword or Arqabus. They're not in the same Weapon Focus, but what the heck. (I think of it as the special Magren Weapon Focus!) So I have Durance using Sword (and shield) and an Arqabus. If Magren wants to bless him with a +10 accuracy with those weapons, who am I to turn away such a blessing? Please understand, the +10 accuracy talents only get a Priest up to the point they'd be with the weapon baseline without the talent as a "Very High" accuracy class. It's a compensatory talent, it's not really as much of a boon as people think it is. Once you're level 9 you never need to fire a gun again anyways. That's a bit arbitrary, though; +10 Accuracy is +10 Accuracy. It's fairly major, whether it's compensatory or not. While it's questionable whether someone wants to build a weapon-focused Priest or not, and I'd say it's doubly so for Priestesses of Eothas, due to the lack of a ranged alternative (which may still be entirely thematically fitting, so I'm not complaining), priests can spend a lot of time auto-attacking and similar, if you see no reason to expend their spells. It doesn't turn the Priest into a Fighter, for sure, but that Talent does put them on-par with the highest starting Accuracies (Fighters start with 30, Priests with 20). I'm getting *a lot* of mileage out of the Arquebus I gave Durance because of this. I think it's more likely that no-one is paying attention to the math, because PoE is extremely forgiving. Even when you sorta-miss, you hit, and you just sorta note that down as a "Eh, it hit" and carry on. Like I said in another thread, you can stumble through PoE like a drunken fool and not pay attention to anything, and still prosper. I would not depend on the Mechanics buff to Seals, though. It's obviously a bug, and they'll probably get around to fixing it. That said, I didn't respond to complain, but to actually support your idea and mention Aggrandizing Radiance, an excellent choice for a "Cleric" or "Warpriest" build of any kind. With a Deity Talent, Weapon Focus, Aggrandizing Radiance and a quick spell or so, I'm pretty convinced that a Priest could slug it out with the best of them, or at least to a reasonable degree. Consecration comes to mind as a truly great "in the dead centre of the storm" kind of spell, to boot. I'm not going to try it on my Priestess of Eothas (I just don't think it's fitting for her), but I really want to try a Warpriest at some point now. Maybe as a Priest of Skaen, all stabby-stabby, Prey on the Weak, Weapon Focus Ruffian (I hate that Ruffians get Stiletto instead of Noble, and I think that Prey on the Weak should get Dagger, not Stiletto, but it's fun to note that Prey on the Weak is one of the few Deity Talents that completely overlaps with a Weapon Focus). The reason daggers are in Noble is because they were commonly carried as ornamental pieces and badges of station by the Aristocracy.

Monks work much better as Moon Godlike offtanks. They still get their wounds but they're not required to watch their life flash before their eyes every encounter.

I'm actually considering a Skaen priest with a Stilettos and the peewee sneak attack. skaen were kinda the defacto deity amongst the beta players who chose to play combat priests. the weapon dr bypass for stilettos stacks with vulnerable attacks talent. make a hearth orlan character for racial bonus. makes for a very potent (if squishy) combatant... who can spam repulsing seal that is almost guaranteed to crit. is a dangerous character indeed. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, Hearth Orlan was what I had in mind. A lot of your defensive failings are also made up for with Priests' myriad defensive spells as necessary. Thinking of doing some cheese late level with Salvation of Time to refresh buff durations and chain pulling an entire dungeon floor with Chanter summons. 3 skeletons can run in 3 different directions and pull 3 different encounters, lol.

I'm actually considering a Skaen priest with a Stilettos and the peewee sneak attack.

Ridiculous. Saying that they don't have a "distinct role" is just another way of saying they're not the "best" at something. So friggin' what!!! They are NOT a detriment to anyone except someone who's looking to min-max their way to a way over the top, totally OP party. This is why you see the developers of PoE and BG/BG2 before that include NPCs that weren't perfect, over the top OP characters. Every class and every NPC doesn't have to be the best at something or a paradigm of perfect stat-hood for the game to be entirely playable with those NPC and those classes. Every character in the party (every player on the team) doesn't have to be a freakin' all-star! Synergy and homogeneity are actually the paladin's true gifts he brings to the table. If you already have a chanter and a priest, adding a paladin is friggin' awesome. Holy buffs. If the paladin is a tank, he'll bring those buffs with competent off-tanking alongside another tank. If he's not a tank, he's at least a remarkably hardy midliner with a pike that can switch to a sword 'n' board set and help your backline squishies get out of engagement after some timely CC. No, he doesn't buff or heal or tank or dps as well as other classes designed for those things, but none of them can fill multiple niches simultaneously without exploiting One Stands Alone or Retaliation builds in general (lol), and if you have 5 people in your party and all the major bases are already covered, a paladin adds to the group's power on all fronts without overlapping.

Or have a paladin-only item you find later in the game that adds a couple engagement slots for free would be cool. Giving priests bonuses based on the PC's alignment even if not the PC would be great too, we're in agreement there.

And picking a WF that synergizes with your diety's weapon "focus" just stacks those accuracy bonuses (or at least I assume they do), which is a good thing indeed. it does stack, which is why a priest can have the highest possible weapon accuracy in the game with a favored weapon. HA! Good Fun! Spending an extra talent to be tied with the Very High Accuracy classes on a weapon you were probably going to use anyways is a small price to pay to have the full gamut of priest casting at your disposal. I'm actually liking the idea of having a combat priest now, lol.

Something to consider for Durance is that as a priest of Magren, he has a special class talent that you can eventually select that gives him a +10 accuracy with Sword or Arqabus. They're not in the same Weapon Focus, but what the heck. (I think of it as the special Magren Weapon Focus!) So I have Durance using Sword (and shield) and an Arqabus. If Magren wants to bless him with a +10 accuracy with those weapons, who am I to turn away such a blessing? Please understand, the +10 accuracy talents only get a Priest up to the point they'd be with the weapon baseline without the talent as a "Very High" accuracy class. It's a compensatory talent, it's not really as much of a boon as people think it is. Once you're level 9 you never need to fire a gun again anyways.

My current party (merely on hard, mind you) has a Fighter tank, Moon Monk off tank, support wayfarer reach paladin, support reach chanter, ranged rogue, and ranged cipher (both wood elves). Paladin basically fills in for the priest and heals with Flames of Conviction and last hits. I do have a Priest, Druid, and Wizard chilling at the Tavern in addition to the companions incase they should be needed later, but so far I've yet to have anyone even drop, even through Eothas' Temple. You'll get exactly the mileage out of a paladin as the niche you carve for him in your group.

A level cap just means you're so good compared to the opposition that you have nothing more to learn from them until you find greener pastures. At level 12 you should still get exp towards 13 from Adra Dragon and the end boss, but not enough to actually hit 13.

It's two weapon style, for fist monks I recommend using two weapon style, peasant weapon focus, and vulnerable attack. I read somewhere that two weapon style doesn't work properly with fists, because you're not actually using weapons. Also fists are already stupid fast, even compared to dual wielding, so it's practically like the two weapon style is baked in already just on principle.

not my experience. only times any of my characters got close to unconscious on hard mode, it was because of melee attackers. early on phantoms, ogres and the ocasional uber kith, later on high level fampyrs and things like... dragons. I can't recall any time my characters were getting a lot of damage from physical ranged attackers. oh, and traps. got knocked out by traps a couple of times. Wasn't talking about physical ranged attackers. Was talking about "distant enemies" that target deflection or reflex with spells and debuffs. I find that the best way to deal with those is to get them into melee range, though. Moreover, on characters for whom deflection matters, Reflex tends to be sky-high due to shields. Not saying Wood Elves are useless at melee range, but ... I dunno, if you're looking to go defensive, Pale Elf is probably better. I was only arguing that they're not useless. They're better tanks than humans and dwarves, for instance. They might be comparable to Pale Elf though because a graze at normal DR might be better than a hit at +10 DR, and a miss is a miss (considering most fire and ice attacks are from distant enemies and are usually fended by Reflex). Kind of disagree with you here, Dwarves have a innate bonus to poison and disease, which can be a bitch in a lot of instances. Those are a lot more situational than getting pelted from range by deflection or reflex fended attacks, though, IMO. Also, defensively, +1 Perception is better than +1 Con. While I do not disagree, it should be noted that +1 Perception is only better than +1 Constitution if you actually plan to fully max out Perception, otherwise it's just a free point to redistribute, same as any other Attribute. And you only want to max Perception if you're going to tank. So if you are going for melee DPS, it doesn't matter in the least. Of course, I was just talking about tanking though. I think we can all agree for melee DPS, unless you're planning on being a hybrid blunderbuss/dual wield rogue, you're better off not using a Wood Elf. Hell, even with a Blunderbuss/Dual wield hybrid rogue, you're probably better off choosing something else, lmao

not my experience. only times any of my characters got close to unconscious on hard mode, it was because of melee attackers. early on phantoms, ogres and the ocasional uber kith, later on high level fampyrs and things like... dragons. I can't recall any time my characters were getting a lot of damage from physical ranged attackers. oh, and traps. got knocked out by traps a couple of times. Wasn't talking about physical ranged attackers. Was talking about "distant enemies" that target deflection or reflex with spells and debuffs. I find that the best way to deal with those is to get them into melee range, though. Moreover, on characters for whom deflection matters, Reflex tends to be sky-high due to shields. Not saying Wood Elves are useless at melee range, but ... I dunno, if you're looking to go defensive, Pale Elf is probably better. I was only arguing that they're not useless. They're better tanks than humans and dwarves, for instance. They might be comparable to Pale Elf though because a graze at normal DR might be better than a hit at +10 DR, and a miss is a miss (considering most fire and ice attacks are from distant enemies and are usually fended by Reflex). Kind of disagree with you here, Dwarves have a innate bonus to poison and disease, which can be a bitch in a lot of instances. Those are a lot more situational than getting pelted from range by deflection or reflex fended attacks, though, IMO. Also, defensively, +1 Perception is better than +1 Con.

not my experience. only times any of my characters got close to unconscious on hard mode, it was because of melee attackers. early on phantoms, ogres and the ocasional uber kith, later on high level fampyrs and things like... dragons. I can't recall any time my characters were getting a lot of damage from physical ranged attackers. oh, and traps. got knocked out by traps a couple of times. Wasn't talking about physical ranged attackers. Was talking about "distant enemies" that target deflection or reflex with spells and debuffs. I find that the best way to deal with those is to get them into melee range, though. Moreover, on characters for whom deflection matters, Reflex tends to be sky-high due to shields. Not saying Wood Elves are useless at melee range, but ... I dunno, if you're looking to go defensive, Pale Elf is probably better. I was only arguing that they're not useless. They're better tanks than humans and dwarves, for instance. They might be comparable to Pale Elf though because a graze at normal DR might be better than a hit at +10 DR, and a miss is a miss (considering most fire and ice attacks are from distant enemies and are usually fended by Reflex).

not my experience. only times any of my characters got close to unconscious on hard mode, it was because of melee attackers. early on phantoms, ogres and the ocasional uber kith, later on high level fampyrs and things like... dragons. I can't recall any time my characters were getting a lot of damage from physical ranged attackers. oh, and traps. got knocked out by traps a couple of times. Wasn't talking about physical ranged attackers. Was talking about "distant enemies" that target deflection or reflex with spells and debuffs.

No it is not. I'm not challenging your position, but I am questioning it, because I want to hear your opinion on it. In what way is the Wood Elf bonus not useless for Melee DPS? Because even in melee you have the reflex and deflection bonuses against distant attackers. Well that's.. well.. if not useless, then useless enough to be rounded down to useless, compared to what you'd get if you stayed at range. Eh, up to interpretation. Most of the real threats in the game seem to be ranged, regardless of whether your character is itself ranged or melee, so there's that. Especially since Elves get +1 perception and deflection/reflex are probably the most useful defenses against some of the most dangerous attacks and spells.

Eh, if the talent was any more intriguing than converting grazes to hits, I'd agree, but as it is it just rounds the bell curve on your dps.

Yeah, someone already got TCS with one, I'd say now's the time to exploit this before OSA or Carnage gets fixed. Also, Human is really good with this build idea too, because the proc has a duration and doesn't instantly expire when healed back over 50%.

This exactly. Hold the Line helps if that character is a tank, but it's really only important how many people are on them at once.

The equations and frame counts are known, you can probably take that information and create a simulator and parse what configurations in base stats, equipment, and class/ability/talent loadouts yield the highest DPS.

Oh yeah, if your party is completely made of people without per-rest abilities, you'd be resting mostly to replenish health or due to fatigue, yeah.

Each race has different niches in which it's good. Coastal Aumaua and Hearth Orlan are fine as DPS-ish off tanks, (The former because they retain decent Stun/Paralysis resistance even with mediocre Constitution, the latter due to their hit upgrade passive). Coastal Aumaua I'd argue are better than mountain dwarves, situationally, as loss of control effects are more dire on principle than DoTs. Even wood elves aren't that bad, their defensive bonus vs distant enemies are "always on" and usually relevant even if the wood elf in question is engaged in melee, as long as the ranged enemies are still targeting them.