Whipstitch

Did they ever change things so shield bash benefits from the two weapon fighting talent? I know it didn't benefit in most versions, but I vaguely remember people hoping that would change.

I rather dislike the god-like and garbage tier terminology for a game like this, since it frankly rather overstates the effect racial abilities have on the majority of builds. There are real differences to discuss but this isn't a Street Fighter II Akuma vs. Cammy scenario. Hell, it's not even O. Sagat vs Cammy.

I think people overrate the importance of wounds as a source of damage for dual wielder monks. Yes, monk damage is strictly vanilla without wounds, but properly talented dual wielding is one of the strongest attack styles, so it's not like their damage is actually outright bad. Meanwhile, monks are admirably suited to wearing enchanted clothing instead of heavy armor because they're not crit bait like barbarians and because they can disengage or stunlock things via Stunning Blow and Force of Anguish. A cloth monk has no business trying to tank entire crowds but off-tanking and murdering single strong opponents like bears via stuns and sheer attack speed is definitely on the table. Such monks won't always top the party damage chart but they bring enough utility via renewable CC and a big health pool that hanging out at 2nd or 3rd place isn't so bad.

Their defenses and health won't be as high as a paladin or fighter tank but chanter tanks do work and bring their own advantages to the table. For example, the fact that tanks typically do poor damage doesn't sting so much when said tank is also doubling as a buffer/debuffer. They work especially well in a tanking tag team--the usual drawback of having two shield bearers in one group is that your damage tends to suffer, but that problem becomes more manageable when one of your tanks gains new super powers after enough phrases pass.

Actually, in my experience just about any monk build does OK against bears as long as they take Force of Anguish as an emergency button--I've done it even as a glass cannon. 10 seconds is a long time for a dual wielder w/ Fighting Spirit to be beating on you unopposed.

Ranged is generally better. There's builds you can do with melee that has a sustained dps advantage but overall I find that's less valuable than being able to easily focus fire.

You're underestimating them. The value of scrolls isn't the high level effects, it's sneaking relatively cheap and powerful effects onto classes that normally don't have access to such things. For example, Fan of Flame is a very nasty wizard spell but the cone can be a bit awkward to use with such a flimsy class. However, if you get Eder up to Lore 4 and give him a shield and a pile of Fan of Flame scrolls you end up with a tank capable of spitting out a 50+ damage AoE on demand. Yes, it costs money, but then, so does crafting a top end weapon and the scrolls are often more effective overall.

No, trust me, it's bad. Real bad. High intellect is very nice for Slicken and a few other powerful but short duration spells, but thanks to the Blast line of talents Wizards are nice enough auto attackers that Dexterity is also a rather solid choice--even with base 10 Intellect Chilling Fog still persists for a healthy 15 seconds. Meanwhile, Constitution is percentage based so dumping it by a point or two doesn't cost you much given that wizards have such low base endurance to begin with. My current PC Wizard is enjoying leads of 21% and 24% in damage and attack speed compared to poor Aloth and believe me, it adds up real fast.

Wizards are actually pretty good, but they have some tight build tolerances to deal with--it's kinda hard to think of the "no trap options" goal as a success while wizards in their current state. Anyway, Aloth's build is borderline crippling--he has decent intellect and low might, but for some dumb ass reason they didn't give him Slicken, which is easily the best crowd control spell available at early levels. Passive damage and blast is a big part of a Wizard's contributions at low levels and Aloth simply lacks the sheer Might necessary to make his blast consistently poke through enemy DR. A PC or hireling Wizard with high Might fares considerably better and can cruise along rather comfortably once they've added Fetid Caress and Penetrating Blast to their bag of tricks.

Don't worry, it's just a temporary condition.

One of my favorite tricks so far is to build a high might tank character and pick up Lore 4 so you can cast Fan of Flames via scrolls while cowering behind your shield. When you have 16+ Might it becomes pretty easy to roast spirits, and the fighter/paladin/monk group of classes do a much better job than Aloth when it comes to coping with Fan's limited range.

Nope.

That Sensuki build is solid and mirrors my own but I'd stress that the difference between Swift Strikes and Torment's Reach isn't a crippling one if your build is taking other ways of spending wounds. Reach hits me as the better overall power, but you won't feel outright gimped by maintaining Swift Strikes and blowing the rest of your wounds on Force of Anguish.

Monks are a bit counter intuitive in that early on tank builds benefit most from taking "damage" powers with their first couple abilities while damage builds really benefit from Stunning Blow and Force of Anguish, which are more along the lines of crowd control/defensive abilities. Here's a rough break down of how it tends to work out so it makes a bit more sense: Case #1 You are a tank monk. You survive incoming damage the same way other tanks do: plate, deflection and high natural health. Getting knocked down to half endurance barely constitutes an emergency for you in most fights, which allows you to get maximum mileage out of Turning Wheel and Rooting pain. You are no rogue, but every bit of damage counts and overall you deal considerably more damage than the average tank build. There are situations where your damage will be sad because the enemies can't really hurt you but you will not care because you are a tank and can still obviously help win that way. Case #2 You are a dual wield monk. You survive by not being targeted as much as possible. You do this by letting someone else tank when possible and retaliating with Stunning Blows and Force of Anguish when that isn't feasible. Your damage mostly comes from having a high Might and Dexterity plus the dual wielding style's sheer attack speed. Sometimes you won't get hurt because things aren't attacking you, but you don't mind because you can still help win that way with your decent damage output and stunning blows .

I actually kinda suspect that 6 rangers could work out better than some other underpowered builds combos given everyone would at least be on the same page. Arquebus Rangers are all burst and no sustained, but the Vicious Aim and Wounding Shot combo is hefty enough that many things won't be surviving the subsequent dot, so rangers are OK at gibbing things to open combat and then scraping out a win from there. What really hurts gun/arbalest rangers in mixed parties is that they still don't burst as hard as rogues nor do they provide enough debuffs that non-rogue melee characters sit up and notice, which makes it awful tough to recommend them over other classes.

I rather suspect that there was some internal expectation that they'd be able to get wizard defensive self-buffs up to give-a-damn levels and that'd make up for it a bit, but that's just rank speculation on my part. Even if they pulled it off, that'd still be a suspect option since you'd be burning a spell to do damage and another spell to stick your nose in safely in the first place, which is a rough deal compared to just casting Blizzard and calling that a solid enough contribution. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the problem with the wizard class is that it's actually kinda hard to define what sort of spell effects wizards should be built around when you've ruled out most of the gonzo table top stuff and have already granted squatter's rights on many effects to other classes. I kinda feel like they asked themselves "What defines a wizard?" and couldn't come up with a better answer than "Grease, Magic missile, Ghoul Touch and Fireball." The class is a kitchen sink full of unrelated effects like in D&D, just without the synergistic benefits of pre-combat summoning and buff routines.

And in my opinion you've already invalidated your opinion by suggesting that decorum is something that can prove things false or unfalse.

Quarterstaves also have extended reach, fwiw. Overall, I think Priests are my favorite casters mechanically. Druid spells are very strong, but tend to be pretty generic while Wizards are somewhat inflexible compared to Priests--their list has a fair amount of clunkers in it, particularly since they've got a lot of single target buffs in a game that goes out of its way to drop the hammer on pre-buffs. By contrast, priest get automatic access to everything on their list, so they can get away more easily with having niche spells for specific situations alongside the bread and butter CC & damage spells like Halt, Pillar of Faith and Divine Mark.

People know what opinions are. Virtually everything regarding matters of entertainment is going to be to some degree subjective so it's safe to assume that there's a tacit understanding that opinions are, in fact, opinions. It's disingenuous to be dismissive of people merely for not making the tacit explicit, especially when Luckmann and Sensuki actually did explicitly acknowledge that their opinions are opinions earlier in the thread. I understand that you want people to move on from this topic, but if that's you're goal you may as well just keep posting "Move on" rather than sticking around but being all grumpy about it.

Alternatively, you could just quit being a ****.

Full attacks were a bad mechanic that really shined a light on how profoundly limited melee characters really were beyond the early levels. The Book of 9 Swords may as well have had "We know it's late, but here's some stuff warriors can do with a standard action" scrawled across the front.

I never complained in this thread.

CRPG experience often consists of some pretty specialized knowledge. As far as build synergy is concerned, I certainly know what you mean, I just take less rosy view of who I think will end up achieving that goal. After all, this game doesn't even feature things like Diablo style talent trees that let you know what abilities you can personally choose from in future levels, so even simple within-this-one-character build synergy is something of a chore. For many first time players I suspect that a lot will ride on how well Obsidian has designed the default companions. And ultimately, my goal with my earlier post isn't to paint Hard mode as some kind of failure and travesty, but to tout "Normal" mode as an interesting option in its own right.

When I say "tanky melee dps" I mean no shields but armor heavier than enchanted clothing. It's a lot easier to deal decent melee damage while wearing plate than it is to deal decent melee damage while wearing a shield.

That's not particularly surprising. Tanky Melee DPS has self-synergy in the sense that they provide flanking buddies on offense and line tactics helps any one melee from being focus fired on defense. That's why adding a pure tank to an otherwise ranged group works out OK while a lone melee dps in an otherwise ranged group tends to get curb stomped or demand a lot of CC and heals. On the bright side, the whole self-synergy thing means that 5 or 6 melee dudes can really stomp some ass as long as they can keep the enemy aoe under control.