JerekKruger

This was the case, but definitely isn't any more. The Rogue may do better single target damage, but the Ranger has Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows which allow them to hit multiple targets per shot. Combine this with Stormcaller* and you are potentially also stunning multiple targets and also reducing their resistance to Shock damage. Then consider the fact that, when given appropriate talents, pets are actually pretty tanky and decent damage dealers (they're not going to win any competitions, by they are a free addition) and you quickly realise that Rogue's are left way behind. Go back to patch 1.X and yeah, Rangers were pretty bad, but Obsidian have buffed them several times in their patches and DLCs and they are now in a very good place. *Stormcaller is one of the easiest soulbound weapons to get. If you beelined it you could perhaps get it by level 5 or 6.

Just noticed something about this build: you've got three additional points of Attributes unspent. Your current total is 75 but a starting character can have up to 78. Given that, I assume you'd go with something like Mig: ​18 Con: 08/05 Dex: 18 Per: 16/13 ​Int: 18 Res: 03 before level 9 (I'm guessing 5 Con and 16 Per since presumably 5 Con was enough?) and Mig: ​18 Con: 03 Dex: 18 Per: 18 ​Int: 19 <- Old Vailia required here Res: 03 afterwards? Anyway, I'm planning on taking this build for a spin, although I'll be going with a group and since I don't like dumping stats below 8 I'll probably go with something like 16/8/18/10/18/8. My thinking is that since I'll have a group I'll probably be buffing a bit more than doing damage, so Might and Perception become slightly less important than they are in solo play. By the way MimeTactics: I just noticed your sig. Your English reads very well to me, there are a few minor mistakes but most of those are probably typos, and you certainly write better that the majority of natives in the United Kingdom.

I'll be interested in seeing the result, and if you do provide convincing evidence that the Rogue can do better single target damage than the Druid I will accept it of course. Good luck.

Yeah, I can see that sort of thing being a good reason for a character to leave your party (or even try to kill you). It's unlikely it would ever affect me anyway since I tend to play CRPGs as a fairly good/nice person. I guess probably what I'd like is a set of companions whose personalities and beliefs are all such that they will at least tolerate each other. By all means have banter between them where they argue, but I'd prefer they not actually leave the party or start fighting each other. But that's just my preference and I'll find a way to cope if PoE2 does have Baldur's Gate style party conflict.

Fair point, although I think that the vast majority of what Durance says is said to the Watcher alone and he makes it clear when you meet him that he has little to no interest in your companions, so it's quite possible that the other companions only interaction with Durance is his occasional lewd outbursts and insults (which most companions happily brush off). Of course you're correct that in real life people do fail to get on, and there's no reason for this not to be present in a CRPG. My main objection is simply that it's frustrating to play a game with such restrictions, particularly a game with eleven classes and precisely one NPC for each class. Given the existence of mods that removed these restrictions from BG2 (as well as reputation restrictions) and the number of tricks to split the various companion pairs in BG1, I suspect a lot of people feel the same way, which is likely why Obsidian decided to do this in PoE. Now of course this breaks the immersion a little, but I've always found I role-play CRPGs quite differently to tabletop RPGs, since I already lack proper control of my character, I tend to design my "headstory" to fit the game story rather than getting frustrated when the game story doesn't fit my "headstory". In the case of Durance for example, I might assume that the other companions see him is a bit of a crazy old man, and tolerate him out of pity*, or they hate him but tolerate him because the Watcher does. *If you follow his personal story to the end, pity isn't an unreasonable response to it, though it's one he'd hate.

I could get behind this idea if it's done well. It's very similar to the idea of making games shorter but making sure the content is all top notch, rather than including lots of filler. I assume this is in reference to the Endless Paths. If so, I think Obsidian kinda shot themselves in their collective feet with their stretch goals and I'd like to imagine they would have done a better job if they had capped it at, say, five floors. By the end of the Endless Paths you can see it: I think it's floor 11 or 12 which is literally just a room with a single encounter, no lore, no dialogue, no interesting puzzles, just a single room with a fight. Luckily Josh has acknowledged this so fingers crossed for the sequel. Also worth noting is that Durgan's Battery is, I'd say, pretty damn good. So hopefully Obsidian will take their cue on any larger dungeons in the sequel from that. But yeah, I agree. Durlag's Tower is a severly underrated dungeon that I actually think is better than Watcher's Keep, but both were excellent. I agree in general, though I'd rather not see Baldur's Gate style character leaving your party or fighting each other because they don't get on, and I believe Obsidian have also stated that they wanted to avoid that. That said, more actually interaction bith with each other and in conversations would be very welcome, and I'd love to see a return of banters that occur in proper dialogue windows and pause the game as I miss almost all the current banters due to looking at some other point on the map.

Another, rather specific, change I'd like to see is to change the Druid's Spiritshift from a limited duration spell, to a modal ability, but remove (or at least restrict) their access to spell casting whilst spiritshifted. On top of this, include talents/abilities that allow a Druid to improve their spellcasting or their spiritshifting so that, a bit like the Ranger is currently, Druids have two obvious paths available to them.

Huh, I wasn't aware of that item. It's a shame I can't put it on Ituumak for the "free" activation.

Same, although because I am a slightly anal mathematician type I usually try to do level 5 as well Level 3 is, in my opinion, harder than 4 or 5 anyway so it's not too hard (plus I usually do all the pre Caed Nua side quests before actually offing Maerwald, so I'm about as high level as is possible at this point).

Me too, although I am also a pause fiend which is a style of play I know some people can't stand.

Huh, the spell description makes it sound like this isn't the case: "The beacon disappears if the ally is revived." Is this wrong? If so the ability suddenly became a lot more appealing.

Unfortunately Obsidian are a business that needs to make a profit in order to carry on existing, so they're always going to have to pander (at least somewhat) to what the bulk of their customers want. Also, as Shadenaut says, quality content is more desirable than having lots of it. Sure, if we can have quality and quantity that's great, but sadly we live in a world of budgets and deadlines.

If I remember correctly the vampires are on, what, floor 8? Usually I'll do this around the time I'm finishing up Defiance Bay and Act II, so I guess I'm getting pretty powerful and well geared.

I really like the idea of the main character being the next incarnation of the Watcher, but I can imagine it annoying a lot of players since, if companions like Edér are going to make a return, it will pretty much require that the current Watcher is killed off "before their time". Personally what I'd love to see is this: we start a new character whose soul contains a shard of Eothas's, which was shattered after his "accident" at Halgot Citadel. What we choose to do with this shard will, of course, be up to us, but options might include trying to reconstruct Eothas or perhaps trying to become a God ourselves. Having just written that, I realise it reads a little like the plot of Baldur's Gate, but I still kinda like it. It also gives the perfect reason to bring back everyone's favourite Edér! As for a conquest introduction, if PoE2 does have save importing then I think it really should also have a conquest style introduction as well, for precisely the reason Elric says.

Well the Ogres are only difficult if you go at an early level. Later on they're pretty easy (well, okay, Ogre Druids are never that easy, but they get a lot easier). Strangely I never found the vampires difficult.

Yeah, I tend to split do the Endless Paths in three or four chunks. I'd say that when you first unlock them, the first two floors can be done (relatively) easily, but floor three is pretty challenging. If you manage floor three though, you can probably do floor four and perhaps five as well.

Not sure how. The question is sufficiently vague that it could be interpreted in more than one way ("will the Watcher be returning?" "will the story of the Watcher impact on the sequel?" "will the sequel involve a watcher or watchers?" etc.) and even if you assume it means "will the Watcher be returning?", Josh's answer tells us nothing.

Most enemies have more than 100 endurance yes, but you're not going to be getting huge Finishing Blows hits against them until their endurance is low and, unless I misunderstood, your 1700 perfect crit relied on Finishing Blows/ Certainly the only 1700ish number I see in the thread you linked is Kaylon's calculation, which relies on an enemy being below 1% endurance. Under these circumstances, 100 endurance is incredibly generous, since the highest endurance I can find on the Gamebanshee guide is about 750 for one of the two bog dragons, so under 1% would be 7 endurance (assuming PoE doesn't track decimal endurance). So to clarify: If you hit an enemy with a 1700 crit when it has 7 endurance remaining then you have only really done 7 damage and therefore that huge crit is not reflected in your real damage output.

To me this is the bigger problem. I can handle a class being underpowered but if it's also underexciting then I have very little motivation to ever play them. As such, I doubt Rogue's will ever reach a stage where they are interesting enough for me to play in PoE, and I am mainly holding out hope that Obsidian will do something interesting with them in the sequel.

Hmm... Well the bad news is the only way back from jumping down the blood hole is to work your way back up. I believe the hole takes you down to level 5 of the Endless Paths so you'll have to work your way through (parts of) three floors to get back where you started. Depending on how you feel about spoilers, you could check out the Gamebanshee guide for maps that will help you do the minimum of each floor. The worse news is, I don't think there's any way you'll be able to avoid fighting at least one Ogre Druid, and as a beginner, with a level 4 party that's not going to be easy. If you're patient and willing to try out various spell combinations you should be able to beat it, but it isn't going to be easy. The good news? Well, PoE is indeed a good RPG, so when you extract yourself from this situation you should have a lot of fun. Also you learnt a valuable lesson: always make a hard save before jumping down a blood filled hole

I'd say that the balance is much, much better now that it was at release (or indeed has ever been). Even the poor Rogue, (almost) universally recognised as the weakest class at the moment isn't really that bad, and the other ten classes are in a pretty good place balance wise.

As Boeroer says, if you do a 1700 finishing blow against an enemy with, say, 100 endurance remaining, you've actually only really don't 100 damage. At that point you needn't even bother dividing by 2.5, as you could have done that 100 damage without finishing blow anyway. This has been tested. People aren't just talking hypothetically here, there was an entire thread where someone claimed that a spiritshift druid was (when build correctly) amazing at single target damage. Other people (including Boeroer at the time iirc) were sceptical, but after testing it turned out that no, the spiritshift druid really was ridiculously good at single target damage. Lucky crit doesn't refer to the idea that crits are uncommon, it refers to getting a crit, that is also a high damage roll, and which benefits from any other non-guaranteed damage bonuses a class might have access to.

This made me laugh.

What Talents or Abilities is a Rogue going to get in its last few levels that are going to significantly improve its damage that is hasn't already taken by level 13? By that point I'd expect all of the only damage Talents that remain are things like Beast Slayer, which are situational, and there aren't any big damage Abilities at high levels for the Rogue. Also, as Dr <3 says, a Shapeshift Druid can reach 200+ damage as standard, not on a lucky max, so pointing out that a rogue can hit for 200 on what was presumably a well rolled crit isn't exactly proving that the Rogue is at parity with the Druid for single target damage.

Congratulations and kudos on having the patience to find a way to do it your way.