gkathellar

Damn it, Obsidian.

Being good at the game is far more important than min-maxing on PotD, because the real difficulty increase comes from the size and composition of enemy mobs, not from the +10 to enemy accuracy and defenses. Use your crowd-control intelligently, don't actively gimp your builds, and keep your guard up. You'll be fine. The defender nerf hurts sword-and-board fighters a lot, but they're still going to be viable. Just, you know, don't take Defender because it's terrible now. Frankly, there are only a few classes that can dump any stat entirely without suffering for it. Rogues and some fighters and monks can drop Int with 0 consequences - that's the only time I'd actually recommend dumping anything. Second-rank barbarians can theoretically dump Resolve. Certain ranged attackers can do alright without any Con or Res, but I feel that it really just makes your life difficult. That'll be perfectly functional for a normal playthrough, although you're almost certainly going to need to adjust it for the triple crown. Personally, I'd drop Resolve and pump up Might, Int and Dex a little. Soldier is a great choice for barbarians in the base game, because it helps them use two weapons that synergize really well with Carnage: Tidefall, a greatsword that drains HP and does damage over time, and Tall Grass, a pike that knocks enemies prone on a critical hit. Tidefall's Drain+Carnage helps offset the barbarian tendency to take damage by sponging it from the whole enemy mob, while Tall Grass turns your base attack into an AoE debuff. I dunno if it's still the best option in White March.

Fighters can make for exceptionally good offtank DPS if you build them right. Monks deal more damage overall and can survive burst damage better, but a fighter who's specced for two-handed weapons or double sabers deals more damage per-hit and survives constant ping damage better. Monks get to spam Torment's Reach and have better defenses overall, fighters get to be boring but reliable.

That'd make sense if those values hadn't already dropped by 10+ points from the change to perception. IIRC, a level 12 fighter with top-range deflection values and the old version of Defender could stand around 150-155 after buffing up with a ridiculous amount of food and going to the best inns. That's enough to tank the Adra Dragon's normal attacks for a while, but enemies in an appropriate level range can still routinely hit or graze that kind of number. It's encouraging to know that the lead dev has such a good grasp of the game's underlying math, though! In the meantime, a melee wizard can still hit 170 for long enough to solo the Adra Dragon. yaaaaaaaaay

A Barbarian with Sneak Attack, and someone who casts CC spell as backup sounds very fun. You could maul a room full of enemies ridiculously fast. Actually I think of saccing a bit of Might for Per on barb to have more accurate carnage + better interrupt and maybe follow it up with Interrupting Blows. That talent will give 15% dmg so that lets me sac might a bit for per. Yeah, Tall Grass just got even bett- No, not gonna say it. If I say melee has a nice thing, they'll nerf it. It's the Blights that are really sick. Per-encounter use actually sort of resembles a good reason to take Blast. ARE YOU KIDDING ME "This class is really strong and has interesting mechanics, folks! People like it a lot! Let's nerf it over and over and over until it has no options and its interesting mechani becomes an active impediment!" Yeah, and having gone one expansion without fixing the unbelievable screwup in the Chanter's design, I think we can be pretty sure that high-level chants and invocations are never going to be worth using. Well, at least that's progress. It's good to know that while wizards are busy turning people into rocks and priests are calling down storms of fiery death from the sky, my ranger will be able to shoot two arrows. Two whole arrows! At the same time. Pretty boss, yo.

The multiclass rogue talent seems borderline obligatory. That's not a complaint, mind - but I think just about any DPS character who's not taking another multiclass talent has good reasons to take it.

Hrmm. Google seems to agree with you, but I could have sworn that there was no implication of the souls being destroyed.

Wat That's awesome. But also wat

"Full" defensive tanks were never very good. That said, all a tank ever needed to provide some supplementary damage output was a 10+ might and dexterity, a saber or mace, and a couple of offensive talents. It's not like being a tank ever ate up all of your talents.

Pallegina and Kana Rua are the only ones who would make sense, lore-wise.

No, that's a bad idea which would function poorly. More importantly, nothing like it will ever be implemented by Obsidian in a million years - so unless you're looking to do a huge amount of modding, it's not really worth going into details. PoE wizards use their personal spiritual power to cast spells. After doing that a certain amount, they get tired and are unable to do it more.

No, it frees them to return to the cycle.

See above posts for more serious answers. If you're really looking to cheese it up, try luring 2-3 Xaurip archers to stand directly in her way. She'll get stuck behind them.

Honestly, it doesn't matter much. All of the Order talents are skippable for a tankadin. Darcozzi and Shieldbearer are both options, but unless you're specifically interested in what they have to offer, neither is essential. 90% of a paladin's tanking power comes from the class itself.

Both options will free the souls, but destroying the machine ensures it can never be used again.

But awesome.

Two things: 1. Gwisk Glas all day. 2. Don't make your ranged characters so squishy. The difference in DPS really doesn't matter that much most of the time, and it just makes your life easier, theoretical optimization be damned.

Another option is Serpent in the Staglands-style "once every N hits". Huh, that's a very cool system. How does it work out in practice? Difficulty should be a function of difficulty settings, not of self-restrictions that only players with extensive metagame knowledge know they should impose on themselves. Excusing imbalances on the grounds that, "you don't have to use it if you don't want to," fundamentally misunderstands why imbalances are problematic: they make characters' abilities difficult to predict for both players and developers. Swinginess is no different. It takes the kind of predictability you want in a game, and punches it in the face. Except people are not equal. What one considers difficult another may consider too easy. How do you please then ? Also self restricting is a good thing for many. Look at Dark Souls player base and Bloodborne. There have been naked-speed runs already :> Extreme hardcore players are going to create every-greater challenges for themselves regardless of the effort you put into accommodating them - and accommodating them is mostly a function of Steam achievements. For the greater majority of players, however, it's important that only the things labeled "difficulty" increase or decrease difficulty. It's one thing to have an unbalanced game - it's another, worse thing to have an unbalanced game that pretends to be balanced, and presents choices of intrinsically greater or lesser value as if they are comparable to one another.

Ah, let me clarify. Focusing your build on disengagement attacks is strictly inferior to just about every other fighter build. It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra? Guardian Stance is pretty miserable, yeah, but that doesn't make Defender any less worthless. Wary Defender, on the other hand, actually isn't too bad in its current iteration. +5 to all non-deflection defenses isn't exactly the best thing since sliced bread, but it's decent. The bad part is that taking it requires a fighter to take and use the revised Defender. Hey, it's about only slightly less worthwhile there than it is in party play.

I agree, with the caveat that these types of things need to be class abilities, instead of/in addition to weapon powers. But then, everyone who takes inspiration from tabletop gaming knows that; Tome of Battle came out 9 years ago. *looks sternly at Obsidian* Difficulty should be a function of difficulty settings, not of self-restrictions that only players with extensive metagame knowledge know they should impose on themselves. Excusing imbalances on the grounds that, "you don't have to use it if you don't want to," fundamentally misunderstands why imbalances are problematic: they make characters' abilities difficult to predict for both players and developers. Swinginess is no different. It takes the kind of predictability you want in a game, and punches it in the face. for me it's more like 'Difficulty should be a function of difficulty settings AND of self-restrictions that only players with extensive metagame knowledge know they should impose on themselves.'On subsequent playthroughs in BG2, i could choose to adjust the difficulty in the game options and/or change my strategy and tactics, both things i do because i'm more familiar with the game. On my first playthrough i could kite more often or rest more often, but that's going to change on my subsequent playthroughs and i might decide that e.g. kiting in a particular battle or resting before isn't necessary. So i can do both things – changing the game settings / restricting myself – out of the same reason that i know the game better and also because then battles play out differently which adds to the replay value. That's nice and all, but the game shouldn't be built around the expectation of it, nor should faults be dismissed on the count that some people play this way.

FTFY. It's "better" except for how shields have a scaling enhancement bonus and a talent that buffs both Reflex and Defense. Which is to say that it's not better at all.

Ive been interested to see how this was received by players. I greatly dislike random loot so I was wondering what people do to combat this. Do you save before every container and then open them, reloading and camping until the timer reaches the item you want? I use the spreadsheet from this board to time my acquisitions so I can get what I want. Random loot sucks.

Which is why it's so important to have a wide variety of gear to cater to numerous different characters and builds - so that you can do both. There's nothing implicitly wrong with random loot, just as there's nothing implicitly wrong with randomly killing an enemy on a hit. But these things have to be viewed in context. Random loot is appropriate in a D:OS for the same reason it's appropriate in a Diablo or a Torchlight - a great abundance of gear allows that your stuff will be constantly replaced by the 5% that, statistically, is going to cater to your build. But in a PoE, where gear serves a world-building role, and is meant to last for a while, it's less appropriate. Instakill effects are similar. It's fine for random encounters to go down instantly in, say, Etrian Odyssey, or Torchlight, or another game where those opponents are basically disposable. But in a game like D:OS or PoE, where enemies are individually placed and encounters are built with consideration, instadeath is problematic. ... or at least, that's how I feel it should be. In reality, PoE's encounters are mostly about filling space. Instakill just reinforces the point.

Difficulty should be a function of difficulty settings, not of self-restrictions that only players with extensive metagame knowledge know they should impose on themselves. Excusing imbalances on the grounds that, "you don't have to use it if you don't want to," fundamentally misunderstands why imbalances are problematic: they make characters' abilities difficult to predict for both players and developers. Swinginess is no different. It takes the kind of predictability you want in a game, and punches it in the face.

They did, presumably right up until they filled just about every map in the game with useless, boring trash mobs that take way too much energy to deal with because of the nature of PoE's combat. That, or Josh is just bowing to IE grognards on the single worst thing from those games, despite continuing to ignore them on things they're right about. Not that I'm bitter, or anything.