Whipstitch

No kidding. You'd think they'd first make it single target or something rather than straight up render the damage nigh irrelevant.

Sure you can. It's especially simple if you already know the mechanics and bestiary well enough to think in terms of attacking specific saves or build "niche" parties that nevertheless have considerable synergy (like an all-ranged burst damage party, for example) or at least have other, more generically powerful builds that punch above their weight class carrying the rest of the group. There's a lot of stuff that can mitigate having weak links in a chain. One of those is selecting Normal mode, and I recommend it to everyone who isn't neck deep in the Backer Beta.

I said "more comfortably" for a reason, since I am talking about relative power rather than strictly viable vs impossible. Mixed builds don't really shine at anything in PotD, whereas on Normal and sometimes Hard (depending on build) it's a bit easier for characters who exhibit a more balanced mix of offense and defense to occasionally be the MVP of "trash mob" fights where you're holding back on your use of daily abilities. Basically, the results gap between optimal play and reasonably good play gets more exaggerated the higher up you go in difficulty, and at the extreme end in PotD I find the rewards for running heavily armored but modest deflection characters to be pretty lackluster.

Yeah, PoE isn't Madden. I say this not to condescend to sports gamers, but to emphasize that PoE isn't one of those games where "hard mode" or above is near universally acknowledged as the de facto standard of play and "Normal mode" appears to be designed for people who lack fully functioning digits. I've personally born witness to otherwise competent adults getting their party messily murdered by Normal mode beetles. Newbies should absolutely go right ahead and take those difficulty descriptions at face value and remember they can fiddle with the slider at any time.

Yeah, I've got the "pull then tank 'n' spank" formula for success on PotD and Hard mode down just fine these days, but unfortunately, my play style on those modes degenerates into just that: a formula. Hard and PotD are by no means impossible, but they feature larger packs and/or more enemies that happily camp out at the far end of the RNG outputs, which heightens the importance of specialists and marginalizes those "mixed builds" Sensuki mentioned. That's a bit unfortunate since I tend to doubt that all of the pre-generated companions are going to be impeccably min-maxed specialists. I encourage everyone who tries this game to ask themselves a simple question: Does knowing that you could be playing at a higher difficulty level feel like something is eating at your very soul? If no, then I encourage you to set the game to Normal and leave it there. At that range, high end enemies are few enough in number that you can more comfortably get away with wild and crazy ideas like putting plate armor and a 2 handed weapon on the same dude or withdrawing a character from the front line without first blowing a spell or two for the privilege. I'd really emphasize the fact that the Backer Beta on Normal isn't Diablo 3 Normal mode easy--it is in fact possible to get characters knocked out by wild animals without first falling asleep at your keyboard.

Tbh, removable body paint doesn't hit me as unacceptable depending on how you fluff things. Mehndi is often traditionally associated with women and brides in particular, but it's an old, old practice. Likewise warpaint is hardly a new idea, particularly in the Americas.

In retrospect I think it may have had something to do with playing at 2 am with a bottle of Teacher's.

Re: Druid OPness. I think what bothers me the most about it is that from my perspective there are really only two types of fights in the backer beta at this point: Fights that I win pretty comfortably and fights where the BBWizard gets blown the hell up by a high Stag's Horn roll.

Tried a tanky monk and really haven't been getting results. Kinda puzzled.

Yeah, the spider caves are rather at odds with my normal preference for rangers--I like to build them with an Arbalest/Arquebus, Vicious Aim and Wounding Shot so they can make fights easier by virtually accounting for an enemy all by themselves in the opening volley. That's a burst strategy rather than sustained damage though, and against the li'l spiders a bunch of it is just plain overkill. And yes, I'm completely aware that what I just described sounds like a crappy rogue. As far as hunting bows go, I actually think my favorite users for that are chanters with Penetrating Shot and Ila Nocked. It's not particularly impressive damage, but it adds up and chanters are a solid enough class that you can afford to do pretty much whatever you want with your talents as you kill time between invocations.

The trick to running "damage" monks alongside tanks is to think of them as utility rather than true dps. A might & intellect monk can bring 9 seconds worth of Stun to every fight and with Force of Anguish they can tack on 14 more seconds worth of Prone per every 2 wounds. They don't do anywhere near rogue damage or compare favorably to casters blowing their dailies, but a big health pool, mediocre damage plus the ability to tekken juggle things to death without blowing daily powers can still make a for a pretty decent 6th character.

The human talent is pretty underrated. Several racials give worse benefits while being if anything more circumstantial--of all the effects present in this game, "damage" is the only universal, which makes it a handy bonus for tanky dps characters who you don't mind taking a couple hits on their mad rush to curb stomp wizards. Bonus irony points when Folk hate gets combined with Island Aumaua hate--people are openly pining for proactive abilities that let you snuff out trouble before it even starts yet gunslinger Islanders are about the only racial that really fits the bill.

Pretty much. The builds I've tried that get the most mileage out of interrupts are builds that just happen to toss out a lot of attacks. Honestly, my Dex, Swift Strikes and Two Weapon Fighting monk didn't even really give a crap about the interrupts he was scoring anyway given that monks get far more reliable CC via class abilities.

I feel you. TBH, I sorta wish that Cautious Attack wasn't in the game and that several classes just straight up had higher deflection to begin with. That'd push more builds towards the middle of the defensive spectrum, but with how few talents people receive I suspect it'd be a healthy move overall.

Sure you are: better auto attack damage. Whether you're close or far away matters very little if you're not being targeted in the first place, which is pretty easy to accomplish in PoE. It's not a big enough difference that I'd bother changing tactics much if you prefer to let things practically run on autopilot, but compared to games where priests practically explode on contact it's doable.

What does that mean?

I know what you mean, but letting priests into melee does seem a bit more viable in PoE than in many games. Between critical existence failure and most priest buffs and heals being AoE abilities there seems to be a bit more incentive for letting the damage spread around than in many rpgs, especially if you're not running many tanky characters. A lot of the best stuff is relatively short range anyway.

I stand by my earlier comments. Paladins deal less damage than Fighters in both games beyond a certain level but it's not nearly as big a gap as you're making it out to be in PoE, not by a long shot. Both classes have very few pure DPS abilites with the bulk of their damage coming from the simple expedient of throwing on the nicest weapon you can get and whacking away. Yet you seem to think that things are different enough that Paladins deserve a name change because they're not warriors. That's friggin' weird given that Paladin auras aren't even that powerful and the class only succeeds because the opportunity they cost for providing support is so very, very low.

I know, right? If only Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or NWN paladins had something conceptually similar like Bless effects or auras. Oh wait, they totally did. My bad. And since Fighter accuracy is viable with or without Zealous Focus it stands to reason that a Paladin benefiting from Zealous Focus has viable accuracy given that the two are equivalent. Also, do you seriously think everyone who played Baldur's Gate and selected Paladins did so because they had the metagame knowledge that Carsomyr was going to be a surprise class feature in a sequel that may not have even come out yet? I think it's more likely that many people selected Paladins for thematic reasons plus the draw of being a front liner with support options instead of weapon specializations. I know that's why I picked a paladin the first time.

You're putting waaaaaaay too much stock into a few development buzzwords that rarely even get mentioned anymore and aren't even mentioned in the game proper. Let's put aside the fact that BG Paladins were listed as a Warrior sub-type and that Josh has called PoE Paladins support oriented in the past and look at what they actually do. BG Paladins were ideologues with support abilities that supplemented but did not usurp their role as capable front line combatants. Their offensive and defensive potential in D&D and BG was built almost entirely on the fact that they were mathematically well-situated to be full participants in basic front line combat by virtue of having a Fighter equivalent base chassis complete with good saves and hit points, with fighters outperforming them in damage largely due to Paladins receiving less proficiency bonuses. If you actually looked at their class features you got things that sound suspiciously like support abilities such as Lay on Hands, Remove Fear, Dispel Magic and other abilities that would be firmly classed as support in PoE. Meanwhile, in PoE, Paladins are ideologues with support abilities that supplement but do not usurp their role as capable front line combatants. They have a base chassis that's virtually identical to a Fighter's and, in my opinion, better than a Barbarian's. The 5 points of accuracy Paladins give up relative to Fighters can be trivially patched up by Zealous Focus and Paladins only fall behind Fighters in terms of damage because Fighters receive some weapon proficiency themed passive abilities. Hell, for several levels I wouldn't even be surprised to find that Paladins tend to out damage fighters--You may object to Flames of Devotion being suggested by players for some weird reason but that quality alone doesn't actually make it a bad ability. From there Paladins move onto getting the promised support abilities, most of which are analogues to the stuff they had in Baldur's Gate. Honestly, my biggest objection to Paladins isn't really their effectiveness relative to the average class, but rather that I find just being a dude with decent stats and some reactive abilities rather boring. I felt much the same way about BG Paladins.

Yeah, I know that after 4e D&D people get a bad taste in their mouths when someone makes comparisons to MMO classes, but I feel like PoE didn't learn enough from the the trials and tribulations experienced by vanilla World of Warcraft Hunters, who were considered strong solo characters but weren't invited to raids. That's because ranged attacks don't really have magic bullet synergy with tanking and other mixed group tactics all on their own. Unless the enemy has point blank AoE effects there is little difference between damaging a tanked enemy from up close or from far away. Thus, if you want to contribute equally while at range you need to be dealing comparable damage to melee heavy hitters or provide enough utility that you're making up for it in other ways. Just being a strong kiter with a disposable pet doesn't count for much when the group isn't pursuing that strategy in the first place.

In my experience people tend to really underestimate the shenanigans an IE thief could get up to. A BGII Assassin or Bounty Hunter with Boots of Speed and a corner or column to work with was a real wrecking ball.

Then how are we supposed to be moving up to something -more- dramatic?

The infinity engine games have a lot to be proud of but I wouldn't really include the gibs in that category. The sheer height and slow arc of the PoE gibs is obviously quite exaggerated, but given that you can shoot a melon with .30-06 and get out two Mississipis before the last piece hits the ground I'm willing to give it the nod over Infinity Engine gibs that appear to be caught in an earthquake.

This. Ranger/Cleric popularity stems largely from the fact that they were basically Clerics who happened to be better than other Clerics. In terms of ethos most people would be hard-pressed to explain what the big difference between a Ranger/Cleric and Fighter/Cleric of a nature deity is supposed to be in the first place. Ranger/Clerics couldn't even scratch the "cunning woodsman skilled with both blade and bow" itch because of their equipment restrictions.