Whipstitch

Yeah, the new products are fine but the days of AMD pricing CPUs like they have something to prove have been over for a while now. They've won back enough goodwill that underdog pricing is just leaving money on the table.

I get that you're just trying to make illustrative examples but you're making an awful lot of mechanical assumptions that simply aren't true or useful when comparing well optimized characters. For one thing, well-built 2 handed weapon users aren't actually twice as slow as dual wielders since you get no benefit from going below 0 recovery and once both builds have met or approach that benchmark you're left with a situation where a 2 hander is only ~15 frames or less slower than a dagger while offering longer interrupts. That actually makes it pretty dang hard to outdo endgame worthy two handers when it comes to tekken juggling people to death, especially since the higher base damage makes it a lot easier to live with giving up enchantment slots for things like the CC effects on the Hours of Saint Rumbalt, Mabec's Morning Star or Tall Grass. At the end of the day, whether you should be dual wielding or rocking a 2 hander is actually pretty build and role specific. At endgame dual wielding is a great choice for builds that have powerful full attacks or wish to compensate for heavy armor with extra recovery speed while 2 handers tend to be better for builds that rely more on primary attacks than full attacks and have the durability/combat tricks to get away with wearing light armor. In the early game it's again an apples and oranges situation because dual wielding has a more pronounced speed advantage thanks to the lack of recovery reduction gear or alacrity potions while basic 2 handers are much, much better at chewing through armor than basic daggers or even stilettos.

Illusions sound cool but the rest sounds pretty vanilla given my preferred rogue builds in POE skipped adding strikes and just used wounding shot and missile scrolls instead. I tried to cobble those guys into something cool, I really did, but like I said, the only thing that ever felt fun was grabbing Deathblows and pretending I had ranks in Use Magic Device.

Personally, the only thing I really liked about Rogues in POE1 was deathblows. Its compatibility with non-weapon damage gave the class a much needed injection of versatility and I really enjoyed the idea that Rogues were at least as good as anyone at using scrolls, spellbinds and otherwise "cheating" their way to victory instead of just being flank monkeys. Did they build upon any of that at all or are the devs still fronting like the ability to attack from behind good is an adequate basis for an entire class? Because if they haven't I'm quite confident that rogues are going to be at the bottom of the class totem pole again because conceptually I don't think they did a good job of identifying niches for them to occupy in POE1.

I feel like the key in the early game is just to be flexible and avoid prematurely throwing yourself into melee. After all, sneak attack is weapon agnostic and at low levels you haven't yet had an opportunity to sink a ton of talents, abilities and crafting supplies into any one particular style of combat anyway, so I never hesistate to shoot monsters right in the face if that's what the situation otherwise favors. That's why I'm a big fan of taking Runner's Wounding Shot and a big nasty ranged weapon in the early game even if the plan is to eventually spend most of my time dual wielding. Between sneak attack and the bleed damage you can routinely deal ~60 damage at level 2 with a basic crossbow from safer distances than what you get out of backstab. It's really nice because it lets you dump a lot of damage onto the biggest ugly without actually getting into arm's reach and once that first domino or two falls it becomes much safer to switch to your melee set and kick out some solid sustained DPS. The talent also works really well for two handed backstabbers, so it's not even like you necessarily have to spec out of it if you want to be a melee goon long term.

My preferred recipient in the No Barbarians & Monks division is Pallegina, so no argument there. Big reason I don't use it on rogues very often is because I don't use rogues very often despite my "canon" PC from release day being a Natlan rogue from Deadfire.

Firebrand has been nasty for ages. Even when I don't build around it i still usually spend a fair amount of time with the Forgemaster's Gloves on a tanky character so that I can have a shield, a gun and a damage set without blowing any talents on it. The base damage is good enough that you can lay down the hurt quite nicely even without much talent or ability support.

1. Ciphers do just fine on PotD. The drawbacks of the focus re-balance that freaked people out were often hilariously overstated. If anything I like Ciphers better on PotD than I do other difficulties since fights last longer and Focus is a renewable resource. That makes them MVP candidates in the early game when spell slots are limited and whiffing on spells causes your Druid to spiritshift into a sad panda. 2. I actually rather like Durance's stat spread. It's not optimal past mid-game when you spend more time casting than wading into melee but I'd argue it's better than pumping Dex and Perception in the early game and that's when the game is normally hardest for Priests anyway. I don't use him for true tanking but I do like to set him up as a brigandine/plate wearing dual wielder and basically treat him like a rogue that can cast Armor of Faith and Consecrated Ground even when things are trying to interrupt him. It's dead simple and really helps push the math in your favor until you get enough powerful spells to transition to casting full time. All Priests are OP at endgame so I wouldn't even call it a sacrifice. 3. Still does nothing. Chanters are fairly poor single target DPS but their AoE really adds up, so all around they end up pretty solid. Kana's stats are fine. Ideally you'd probably dump his Dexterity harder but otherwise his stats are concentrated in the right places. Soulbound weapons take any specialization, yes. What makes the best tank is pretty hilariously subjective. Personally, I mostly avoid the classic sword and board fighter build because I feel like it's way, way over-specialized. You don't need Constant Recovery AND defense talents AND a shield if have anyone else who is even moderately tanky or good at CC to take the heat off of your "main" tank. Personally, some of my favorite tanky NPC builds are the following: 1. Tanky Kana. You put Kana in heavy armor and give him Little Savior and you're basically done. He won't be the most durable tank in the world, but he'll be good enough with some support and as we already covered he doesn't actually give up much offense by having bad Recovery times. He just chants the Dragon Thrashed from behind his buckler and foes melt away. If you have any issues with health you can just take Wound Binding and some ranks in Survival for the resting bonus. People get weird bugs up their asses about doing that for some reason, but I'd take a Chanter with that setup over virtually anything else. 2. Marking Pallegina. Get a big nasty ranged weapon and put the Outworn Buckler and a debuffing/coordinating/marking weapon in your other set. You blast people with Flames of Devotion and Wrath of the Five Suns then when the survivors rush your front line you swap to your buckler and stand around looking pretty. Low sustained damage but stupidly high single target spike damage per encounter. It's a lot easier to get away with having crappy auto attack damage when you start the fight by hammering the most dangerous opponent right into the ground. Late game you get passive aoe damage that helps shore up your sustained damage too. 3. Offensive Eder. Give him +healing received gear, Might boosters, a ton of Survival and two sabers or warhammers. Knock down dragons, win the game. 4. Loud Maneha. Give her Badgradr's Barricade or the Dragons Maw then have her jump and yell until people die. Debuffs everyone and works great with other moderately tanky builds. At level 11 you still take Heart of Fury because you're not an idiot. 5. Riposte Devil. Badgradr's Barricade, Binding Rope and a stunning weapon. Not very good as a main tank because Recovery hurts rogues more than chanters and the class has even worse base deflection and no group buffs or built-in AoE. She does nice single target damage though and immunities make her a solid off-tank/tanky dps. Anything that tries to fight her head-on gets debuffed and Deathblowed into oblivion. 6. Zahua. Umm, he's a monk? The dude has literally built his lifestyle around getting punched in the face, so hell yeah he can tank. He's admittedly more rewarding as a DPSer though due to his race combo. The true majesty of monk tanking lies in creating a MC Fire Godlike with turning wheel.

20/20 with no recovery penalty and some DR is a contender on anyone, really, although I'd miss the proofing you can get with other armors. If anything I'd probably put the uniforms on my backline while Kana, Pallegina and Eder rock some plate, Pike's Pride, Sun-Touched Mail or one of the good hide armors.

FWIW, I forgot that the Binding Rope gives the same amount of Con as the hat, so that takes some of the shine off of things. I say this not to really denigrate the hat--It's still quite decent--but to again marvel at how stupidly good that damn Rope is. It could give a point of negative Con and I'd still be one of my favorite belts since the Stuck effect is so nice.

Frankly, I've found that going all-in on a particular strategy is usually more likely to break the game in your favor rather than produce a party that suffers from too much redundancy. In the case of two rangers you get a healthy dose of synergy just by taking Predator's Sense with both characters and having someone in the party who is good with DoTs. Which is awful convenient because you can fulfill that last requirement just by having someone wield Tidefall, Drawn In Spring or Persistence, three weapons which are already among the finest weapons in the whole game anyway. Kana Rua's also a great enabler since he can bring tanking, buffs and dots to the party while still having an extra weapon slot leftover for a pair of guns to hot swap with.

Maegfolc Skull is always an endgame contender but otherwise the hat is especially attractive to a Tidefall melee rogue that dumps both Will defense attributes and relies on Con and Draining to stay standing. The immunity effects help paper over the glaring weakness to Will targeting crowd control--which is especially deadly to such rogues because their self-healing is tied directly to their damage output--and the build was unlikely to go out of its way to bogart 3+ Resolve or Con items anyway, so getting solid boosts to both one slot is a nice bonus. It'd be nice if the Dexterity boost was higher but honestly I could still see the hat being endgame worthy for such a build even if you override it with Formal Footwear, a Ring of Thorns or the new belt. Personally, I'll probably go with Pensiavi Mes Res, a situational ring slot and a Boots of Speed instead and mostly leave the Thorns and Formal Footwear to my party mates.

I'd like to enter Spellblades into the race as a dark horse we should monitor. Blast is no Carnage, but it ain't bad, either, and neither is Deathblows. There's an alternate timeline somewhere in which implement wielding Rogue-Evokers and sneak attacking Ogre Assassins wreck everyone's weekend.

Yeah, it's not a big deal, but it just vexes me because ideally it would be a good time to start dumping your wounds or spamming scrolls. Obviously you can still manage that by keeping an eye on your Endurance bar but still, consider me mildly annoyed when I'm running a monk and super annoyed when I'm running a Frenzy/Sanguine Plate build. Perhaps a low-int Tidefall human rogue, then, would work wonders. I've done this before and it works pretty well but unfortunately low Intellect rather hurts your Fighting Spirit duration. On PotD at least I actually prefer to keep Intellect at 10 or so. Losing a bit of Wounding damage stings but it makes you a better scroll/spellbind user once Deathblows comes online. That's kinda nice since otherwise the class's lack of inherent AoE damage really starts to sting over a full 16 levels. Plus, in the early game it's also good for using Veteran's Recovery to stay alive until you can get Tidefall in the first place. A minor issue there is that if you keep Veteran's Recovery and pair that with Tidefall on a rogue it means that you tend to have two settings, one called "Too healthy for Fighting Spirit to activate in the first place" and another I like to call "Critted into itty bitty pieces by Ogres." Still, you can respec out of Recovery easily enough if you're genuinely annoyed by being too tough, so I guess it's the very definition of 1st world problems when you get right down to it. Honestly, my biggest issue with the setup is probably that I don't think rogues are quite worth the micromanagement in the first place, especially if you're running a DPS fighter or monk on top of that. Which, is too bad, really, because thematically I've always liked the archetype. Still, you guys were right to point it out as a solid option, so thanks for the reminder.

Just curious if there's some build I haven't thought of where they're really a standout. I usually pass on them since their racial ability and attribute scores come across as half-assed--lots of aggressive builds would cheerfully dump Resolve but Fighting Spirit is a DPS oriented ability that doesn't even display properly and is a pain to monitor. So the best I can really think of off the top of my head is a long pain monk, since they don't spend quite enough time at range OR getting punched in the face to make wood elves, moon or fire godlike into an absolute no brainer.