thundercleese

The main reason pure casters are better for damage dealers, is outside of a few items that add ~3-10% damage there are only two ways to increase spell damage - Might abd PL. To make things worse, PL is a separate multiplier on spell damage from Might the the afore mentioned items. Most pure casters will take the Prestige talent (+1 PL) which means you are PL10 vs PL7 at end game (subclasses and PL increasing items aside). Druids are strong, versatile casters - some good debuffs, good HoTs and lots of DoTs, including two raw damage ones that have obscene AoE. Also the storm spells. I think the reason people don't like them for damage dealers is because most of their strong spells are DoTs, and people prefer to throw fireballs that do ~200 damage instantly, as opposed to over a minute.

The Sharpshooter PEN bonus is actually on foes closer than 4m IIRC, so wouldn't be too terrible on a pike/quarterstaff user, for example. But as a tank yes absolutely horrible choice. Corpse-eater/Sharpshooter sounds like a bad time too.

Yeah I had initially thought it would be great for dueds who try to rush the back line - until I tested it. I made a bug report some time ago about this, the fact that the on kill buff (all versions) can create separate instances that stack (so theoretically you can keep increasing your damage up to infinity if you never rest), and that the description of Double Tap is a bit unclear/misleading. So far no changes have been made to it.

Mob Stance would'nt work as it only targets enemies, whereas you're killing your own summons.

In PoE1 they were based purely on the characters level. I have seen literally no difference in either priests Holy Radiance, or Pallegina's Deep Faith as my dispositions developed in any of my playthroughs.

All DoTs ignore armour, so providing they aren't immune you could be better off using the Dragon Thrashed.

Nope, same issue there. The upside is when you confirm your class change it automatically retains you.

You would still lose/keep the first level choices though, no?

It may have been fixed in the latest patch, but for me this upgrade was always applying the knockback - even at max range. So yeah I avoid it, Double Tap is far more useful anyway. Can really trivialise some of the earlier undead encounters. It will also auto-kill constructs (though not the top tier ones).

If you don't have time for a full attack you're hardly going to have time for auto-attacks. It has a base duration of 3 seconds, a recovery period and a cast time. So with 10 int if you auto-attacked once you would have down time. With +10 int from Duality you could probably get an attack off between them, depending on DW, dex, etc.

With a decent Intellect score, Infuse with vital essence runs out around the same time as Frenzy. The only other second level spell to consider would be Mirror Image, and if you have the need to use it it would be best to switch to Vaporous Wizadry for the extra cast. Since all three casts are almost instant you shouldn't suffer from an interrupt while casting. Infuse has a far greater duration than frenzy, my point was that inspirations don't make you immune to an affliction - they just cancel an active one or prevent the next one to afflict you, while being consumed in the process. And I disagree, Merciless Gaze is a worthwhile second level spell (though less so on a melee Berzerker who already gets 30% conversion). Only problem with svef is Arcane Dampener will ruin your day - even more so on a Nalpasca.

Yeah, per rest means you either rest after pretty much every encounter to abuse it, or you save it for if/when things start going really bad. But even then the cast times are so long by the time it goes off it's probably too late. Yeah a (fairly) powerful unique passive effect would be nice. Or at the very least +1-2 to an attribute to go along with the per rest. Or just per encounter. As it stands I'll probably just forget I even have them equipped.

The problem with using buffs is it only cancels/blocks the current/next instance. If your frenzy wears off and you go back in, you need to remove it again. So yeah the gear is best if it fits your build, otherwise food/drugs/paladin. Or if you're confident you will demolish every encounter within 1-2 frenzy's then sure go with a spell. Tactical Barrage means losing out on 25% hit to crit. May not be a big deal depending on the build though.

As the title says, in my early testing of the Essence Interrupter sometimes I would kill an enemy who had the effect active, yet would get no summon. At first I thought it was because on crit they were exploding and leaving no corpse. But then I tested one dying due to bleeding out from Arterial Strike and again got no summon. It was working on some mobs, but not others. I have a video here of the tests - you'll want to skip to ~1:40 for the first crit kill with no summon. Then the DoT kill was ~3:55. Save file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/z7p7rlvryjo2alg/Blathiel_%28TheEndlessQueries%29_%282e7aaa45-bb7b-4b34-8493-733a9942db73%29_%28LAX-2ABCDE%29_%28935047080%29.savegame/file

Damn I just did one too. That'll teach me to use the search function

Yeah I reported this in 1.2, I believe it has to do with changing weapons. Upgrading from the base effect to either of the others will create a new instance while keeping the old as well.

Thanks for looking into this for us. IIRC those values match what was posted in the Reddit thread, they just offered no proof/source to their claims.

So I decided to check whether the weapons with "best of [physical]/[elemental] damage" gained the +1 penetration from their respective passives. Essence Interrupter and Lord Darryn's Voulge both received it from Heart of the Storm, however Frostfall didn't from Secrets of Rime. I haven't checked any summoned weapons that do elemental damage, however I have read that the Fury Druid form does. This shows up both on the character sheet and in combat logs. I don't believe there are any other such weapons in the game at this stage, but if there are it would be worth checking their code too. Here's a save with all three weapons, and Aloth with both the elemental passives: http://www.mediafire.com/file/s9k2abi6zq2e8sz/Blathiel_%28TheEndlessQueries%29_%282e7aaa45-bb7b-4b34-8493-733a9942db73%29_%28LAX-2ABCDE%29_%28935047668%29.savegame/file Edit: Just saw this has already been reported here.

Yeah clear out is great. Contrary to its description it seems to hit everything in a cone centered around the targeted mob, which scales with AoE increases. Not so good on a tank though whose job is keep mobs contained.

The new soulbound shield also has a (frost) retaliate on miss proc. Though I think you need to have large shield modal active for it to work?

I know right. Would take three Arcane Cleanses to remove it. Yeah good idea, will probably write one up tonight - unless someone else wants to. Are there any other elemental weapons? Can't really be bothered testing all the summoned ones tbh...

From what I've seen so far, they all seem to be 1/rest defensive buffs/debuffs with very long cast times. I haven't used to console to explore them though so may have missed some.

Just thought I'd mention if you want +MIG on gloves, best are Woedica's Strangled Grasp. +2 Might, +2 Burn AR and 1/rest paralyze skill.

Including my first build thread 100% agree about a sticky, could include some other basic mehanics people may not be aware of too; how PEN works on lashes, buffs/debuffs that do/don't stack etc.

For the screenshot above I used the Unity Engine mod. Equip the ring, open character sheet, open "Remove Effects" in the UE panel, scroll down till you see "The Power of Money" then click the '?' next to the '-'. AFAIK there is nowhere in game that displays a total hit to crit value. And they don't shoe crit chance as it depends on your accuracy vs the applicable defense of the target.