gkathellar

Yes, for a game that presented itself as very interested in mechanical transparency during development, mechanical transparency is painfully absent.

Yessssss

Generally, most things that prompt a journal update for a Quest or Task will count as a Turn. It's not always 100% clear, but that's the gist of it.

Nice. Much obliged, dherve. Anything that makes Rapid Recovery actually worth taking is good in my book. Yes, that's how these things work.

+1 to the OP's suggestion. Devil is terribad.

I agree, but it comes down to two things: (a) the lack of selectable AI scripts, ala IE, enabling players to choose very specifically what level of resource consumption they're willing to see from the AI, and (b) redundancy in AI for allies and enemies, when most enemies don't have the same per-encounter limits as allies for, you know, Reasons.

Set up hotkeys for your main per-encounter spells. Makes your life a lot easier.

I agree completely. PoE really could've benefitted from taking either (a) DA:O's route of constantly reminding you that the main character is cursed, or (b) KotOR2's approach of giving you a protagonist who was keeping secrets from the player.

Yeah, linguistics aside, Ixamitl's lore doesn't give me much of an Aztec vibe. It sems more like the mystical land of frolicking naked nymphs, where your every desire is granted by bald blubbering bugbears.

Companion conversations in general do. You could have one track for all of them pretty easily, too, since everyone is a big pile of angst.

I agree with the OP - Vailia seems like an interesting next stop. I think it would be especially cool to see a city done in truly expansive detail, comprising 15+ areas and most or all of the locations in the game. I don't understand the desire to visit Readceras. Isn't it basically described as a nation of crap farmers? That actually sounds like a really cool idea. It would provide a rational basis for a lot of Stronghold activities seen in PoE. Oriental? What is this, 1840?

It adds to healing effects originating from the wearer, like Might.

Clubs are strong for most frontliners, if only because Blesca's Labor is really good.

And a fighter can't survive keeping 5 enemies that would be a threat to the rest of the party on themself. Nor is their much point to doing so, unless you literally only have a single frontliner.

The dragon encounters are terrible, yes. They revolve far too much around high numbers and far too little around the dragons doing things that are interesting and/or hard to counter. Well, not for any length of time with the accuracy buff from 2.0. Before that, you would've been flatly wrong.

Fighters are decent low-maintenance offtanks - solid "fifth man" party members. They're not tops at anything and never were, but they're about as good at their best function - surviving on the frontline while using high-damage weapons - as they ever were.

DPS fighters were always viable, and the deflection nerf hasn't made them any better. It's just made tanky fighters worse.

Suppress Affliction?

new DPS build gogogo Not sure if serious.

Yeah, this pretty adequately sums up the familiarity issue. The only thing I'd add is that I think dropping Strength while retaining Dexterity (and Constitution to a lesser extent) adds to the conclusion. Dexterity should really be called Wits.

Her body isn't alive. The blood pool is all about the soul, however--ripping the soul apart or trapping the soul inside the blood pool. And her soul is perfectly fine--it transferred complete and whole with not a single tear or shred. The man who did it really is a *genius*. Yeah, but she doesn't have any, you know, blood.

Not quite. Might is spiritual strength, and physical strength is one of the many things that comes from spiritual strength. Everything in PoE runs on soul power.

I'd advise you to avoid overspecializing. A lot of people will guide you toward extreme builds for PotD, with very high main stats and everything else dumped, built overwhelmingly towards a single purpose. My experience has been that characters like these descend rapidly into uselessness when your plans start to disintegrate. Give your tank a saber instead of a hatchet. Build your fighter for single target DPS. Have fun. PotD is a big difficulty jump from normal, but the best solution to that jump is to get better at the game. And always, always remember your CC. This isn't even remotely true, and is a sure sign of someone who doesn't actually know what they're doing.

Wait wait wait They got rid of draining?

That arguably makes it worse. If enemies avoid taking disengagement attacks, then at least Defender lets you pin them down. On the other hand, if they break engagement all the time, then the ability doesn't even let you divert fire from your squishies, and all it's granting you are occasional piddling shots with an accuracy penalty. That'd make sense if those values hadn't already dropped by 10+ points from the change to perception. A correction: since enemies now also gain perception bonuses to accuracy, this claim is even less grounded in reality than I had realized. TBH, I'm not really sure that's the case anymore ( but, admittedly, I haven't seen the 13th level fighter class ability yet ), at higher levels. Take a monk, equip him with heavy armor, give him the same weapons you'd give the fighter, then iron wheel and turning wheel, and, if you deem it necessary, duality of mortal presence, cautious attack, veteran recovery. Yeah, that's quite a bit of abilities and talents, but the fighter will also have to grab at least two or three in order to keep up with the monk's damage, and doesn't really have any good defensive picks, aside from cautious attack and superior deflection, and, maybe, unbroken and unbending. Let's say that you accrue 10 wounds and just let the monk auto-attack ( just like you would with your fighter ): turning wheel gives him +50% damage to the fighter's +25% ( and only costs a single class ability instead of a class ability + a talent ), and iron wheel grants him +10 DR, with which the fighter just can't catch up, so the monk's way ahead in terms of damage and DR. Yeah, the monk doesn't start the fight with 10 wounds, but it doesn't need so much time to reach them ( around 80 damage taken with lesser wounds ) ,and, with that +10 DR, he's really hard to take down. Same HP, same accuracy, the monk has more health and slightly higher secondary defenses ( +8 due to duality ), slightly lower self healing, but can deal way more AoE damage (rooting pain), on-demand CC and can also be more mobile if you invest in Flagellant Path. To me, it seems the monk is way ahead, what am I missing? I'm not sure you're missing anything, actually. That's a reasonably solid argument, and I think White March has done a lot more for monks than fighters at high levels, so ... there's, uh, Knockdown? Knockdown is pretty okay. ... nope, I got nothin'.