gkathellar

Durance has a disease, and that disease's name is Magran. And he knows she's a terrible, hateful thing who has made him a worse person and the world a worse place, and he hates her for it, but he can't bring himself to give her up because he is what she's made him, and abandoning her would require him to acknowledge just how bad he is. To paraphrase Roger Zelazny, he knows he has a degenerative disease, but he's convinced that it looks good on him. And that is why he works as a character, in spite of being really, really evil.

Well, an extremely defensive paladin can push their defenses into the high 110s for Fort and Will and 130s for Reflex without taking those Talents. This still isn't enough to guarantee misses from a lot of enemies, so yeah, Defenses kinda suck.

As has been said, FoD works like a Lash. Lashes do not work with elemental damage boosters. It's really stupid, yeah.

Stay far, far away from the trigger-on-kill abilities. They're bad. Don't use them. If you can stand to pick the "Clever" and "Passionate" conversation choices, Fires of Darcozzi Palace is pretty great. Otherwise, order doesn't matter too much - unless you've got a bunch of other tanks, in which case Shieldbearer is alright.

Voss has it. Now, for your next question: Should it be the other way around? Yes. Yes it should.

"Kimburra;" an erudite barbarian We hear a fair bit in PoE about the Crucible Knights - how they've been a while, and are increasingly cemented as an institution. As the law enforcement agency of Defiance Bay, some Crucible Knights are part of long-standing families who make up a political "upper class" within the order (and who drive much of the agitation for land and titles). Kimburra was born to that upper-class, and she is everything you might dread her being: a moneyed, childish amateur philosopher with a good education and too much power. Groomed for the knighthood from a young age, Kimburra was raised with a belief that the head of the state is the source of all civilization. She recieved the best education money could buy, where she was taught that civilization is power. And through all of this, Kimburra was totally insulated from the consequence of her actions - which taught her that power is everything. All of this has created a perfect little authoritarian proto-Fascist, whose tendency toward rationalization and violent temper have led her to despise the very institutions that created her. She sees Dyrwood as an illegitimate state, the Crucible Knights as an illegitimate order, and most of the gods as illegitimate moral authority figures; Kimburra longs for the coming of a glorious dictator, a Hobbesian Leviathan who can, "set this corrupt country back on the right track." Only knighted several months ago but already distinguished by her enthusiastic enforcement of the law and habitual use of excessive force, it is just beginning to dawn on Kimburra's immediate superiors what she is and what she is capable of. Currently, she's on leave from her duties, after a particularly brutal beating of several Dozens agitators at a politically sensitive time. Because she has experimented with the worship of Woedica (an authoritarian deity who holds some appeal to her), she is likely to meet the Watcher at the Oathbinder's temple. Because the Watcher is a step above normal people, she sees them as a natural fit for her Leviathan. The Watcher's disposition ends up mattering little to her - in the end, past the philosophy and the rationalizations, Kimburra is a psychopathic sycophant, who wants a "worthy" master to exalt and kill people in the service of. Caed Nua doesn't hurt neither. Because she is a scholarly character with significant education, I should mention the real-world philosophical influences Kimburra is likely to paraphrase. Thomas Hobbes, I believe I've already mentioned. She should almost certainly quote him word-for-word now and then, and it should be noted that the Dyrwood's recent social discord has fueled her misanthropic view of society much as the English Civil War fueled his. She would also be comfortable alongside the Legalists of ancient China, and often justifies her bouts of violence, including the killing of several scholarly rivals at a younger age, with the notion of "straightening out" twisted people and their twisted society. Her ideal dictator is roughly in line with the Nazi misinterpretation of Nietzsche's Overman. In terms of appearance, she probably falls in between these two pictures. Clean and well-groomed out of habit, with hair cropped short to better suit her occupation. At rest, she seems professional and at ease, but she has a fiery intensity when engaged that can seem charming at first, but grows in the direction of unnerving. Since she's probably a psychopath, she has the conversational habits of one - she rarely moves or gestures when speaking, makes excellent eye-contact, and draws close to whoever she's speaking with. Name: Long, noble, and a little masculine; I came upon Kimburra by hybridizing Old English names Race: Meadow Folk or Mountain Dwarf; doesn't matter much Culture: Dyrwood all the way Background: Aristocrat. +2 Lore. She done got learned. Suggested Attribute spread: Class: Barbarian. Learned affectations be damned, all her good manners fall away in a fight to reveal the beast within. Abilities: Frenzy. Disproportional response is practically her calling card. Talents: Weapon Focus: Knight. Odd as it may seem, she is a trained knight, and if you ignore her wild-eyed hatred, she almost fights like one! Skills: Given her educational background and the +2 Athletics from Barbarian, she'll almost certainly have dumped all of her points into Lore. Additional notes: No, she's not going to betray the party for the forces of villainy. She's a horrible person, but she is definitively on the side of capital-C Civilization and capital-L Law - it is her opinion that the Legacy is a Bad Thing, even if it has shown the Duc for the powerless, illegitimate creature that she's convinced he is. Likewise, she holds a lot of other bad people in low regard - and as proof that she's totally justified in being recklessly violent toward just about everybody.

I don't really understand this assertion some people have that there's no middle ground between "decent person," and, "kill on sight." In real life, there are plenty of people who are pretty evil, but that doesn't mean you can't make polite conversation with them. Business people, lawyers, law enforcement officers, bureaucrats, government officials ... all of us have met genuinely, visibly bad people in these positions who might nonetheless be perfectly nice friends or family members. And this is to say nothing of criminals, fascists, and other "bad elements," who are awful human beings but mostly harmless in a majority of cases. Moreover, evil characters who are believable and functional in society are a thing in CRPGs. Korgan was not some unfathomable character - he was a mercenary who reveled in the killing his job gave him the chance to do. Viconia was a nasty sort who fully believed in "do unto others," but she wasn't about to run around crushing peasant skulls. Edwin abused his authority and hurt people for spite and personal gain, but not in an unusual way. All of these characters were evil by any reasonable metric, but they were also believable. There's precedent, is what I'm saying.

Or both.

Heavily armored, sword-and-shield monks make for fantastic tanks, yes.

I've definitely seen the opposite statement on these boards. Retaliation is seperate from melee attacks entirely (i.e. it doesn't use your weapon stats), thusly it doesn't proc anything from your weapons and it doesn't proc draining. Though it DOES count as a melee attack so something like Carnage WILL proc from it. Riposte on the other hand does count as a full melee attack and so WILL proc draining. Ah. That explains that, then.

It's 143. Or 158 on potd. Hmmm ... doable without any temporary effects whatsoever? Let's see. Take a level 12 Wild Orland Paladin w/20 Perception, 20 Resolve, Song of the Heavens, Hylea's boon, +10 deflection ring, Lillith's Shawl, maxed-out Faith and Conviction, Deep Faith, Cautious Attack, Superior Deflection, Weapon and Shield Style, a hatchet, a superb large shield, and some +2 resolve item or other. So that's: 25 Base + 36 levels + 15 perception + 12 resolve + 10 ring + 11 Faith & Conviction + 2 Deep Faith + 10 Cautious Attack + 5 superior deflection + 28 superb shield + 6 shield style + 5 hatchet = 165 deflection /low whistle

My post was just a little self-deprecating poke at myself. You should try it some time. Humility, honest and fearless self-evaluation, and a little humour can go a long way. You should probably give up on trying to shoehorn your hangups and perceptions into other people's thoughts and perceptions. Consider that a little friendly advice, because, like, I care about you as a human being and stuff. (Not really) For a guy who seems really hung up on the amount of reading in PoE, you sure do create a lot of text. In a different post, in which you yet again insisted on spreading your anti-reading crusade, you brought up hyperlinked definitions for words. Try this one. Have a very nice day. 76prophet, I just want you to know, you are my hero.

I don't actually mind the Might thing as a concept, if the Attributes were balanced better (which they're not), but I must say that now I have the image in my head of the angriest man-nurse slapping bandages on SO HARD. If it's a female nurse slapping bandages on SO HARD, i'll take it. Too much information, man! Nobody on the internet wants to know about your kinks! ... uh. Nobody on this forum wants to know about your ... okay, look, save that for PMs or whatever. I'm too chaste and innocent for that crap.

One proviso with respect to optimization advice: you can get away with a lot in this game, especially on Normal. You don't necessarily have to optimize at all. Personally, I prefer to use a heavily armored, sword-and-shield monk as my main tank, and I've found this works very nicely with a Constitution of 7 (or lower, to be honest). If you're going for a fist-fighting off-tank, you'll probably want a little more Con, and you'll probably want to avoid being surrounded by literally everything in the universe. Con is ... not very valuable, in general. There are exceptions, but tanks tend to rely more on Deflection than on Endurance, and other characters tend to rely more on not being targets. Because it's percentage based, Con has more value for high-HP classes like monks and barbarians, but their starting pools are also good enough that they can afford to take losses. You can generally (again, with some exceptions) afford to keep Con at 10 or lower on anything other than a retaliation tank. You'll start finding stat-buffing items pretty early, but the highest stat bonuses from items are +3, and they don't stack. There are also Inn bonuses (gained for 24 hours after resting in particular rooms) ranging from +1-4, but you can't really exploit those without a significant amount of meta knowledge. Note that the highest stat requirements for conversation are 20, so there's that. The cipher companion is totally usable, it's just that her stats are dreadfully arranged. Cipher is a great class (in terms of design, fun, and power), and while stats help it a lot, it's less stat-dependent than some other classes. Armor has nothing to do with taking crits. That's all deflection. Armor just mitigates the damage you do take.

I'm fairly certain Fighter is better in every way A fighter with Wary Defender has +15/+10/+10/+10 Defenses (one talent, one ability). A paladin with Cautious Attack and maxed F&C has +21/+22/+22/+22 defenses (one talent). With Deep Faith, that's +23/+27/+27/+27 (two talents). Fighters are grand. They have great CC and recover quickly from all kinds of crap. Paladins are a poorly-designed, discordant mess. Their abilities do not make sense. Many are useless. Paladins deserve a serious fix, and I hope they get it in 1.05. They still make for the best 100% pure damage-sink tanks, however, due to their strong defenses.

I oneshotted her on my very first playthrough on path of the damned. Why is it always the ignorant who whine the most? It's the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'd read the whole article (it's very interesting), but the tl;dr is that people who know less are also generally unaware of how little they know, and suffer from illusory superiority and inflated confidence as a result. Idiots gonna idiot.

Does that actually work now? Because last time I checked, that didn't seem to actually work.

I've definitely seen the opposite statement on these boards.

If you're fine with the fact there's one among the companions already (the redundancy doesn't end up being a problem), Cipher is your ballgame for damage+micromanagement. Ciphers do very well with high Intellect, which provides a fair number of conversation options. If you're really committed to getting both conversation options and respectable (not high damage, just respectable), go for a tanky monk or barbarian with maxed-out Might, Resolve and Perception. You'll need to dump Dexterity (and Constitution if you go the Barbarian route, for the Intellect points), but both can tank and dish out respectable damage at the same time.

Indulge me. I found fighters superior but that was before I knew that FaC only works for the Watcher. Why are paladins better? Side note: My previous post is a bit from the perspective of "IF YOU USE MY PLAYSTYLE THEN ETC ETC" but I don't think endgame fighter tanks are going to do significant amounts of damage outside contrived situations. Higher all-around defenses, mainly. Supportive things to do while tanking, to a lesser extent. It's by a small margin, but I do think that as a pure 100% tank, paladin pulls ahead and stays ahead. A lot of what fighters use to tank is based on taking hits and then recovering from them. That's great if you're expecting to take hits, but in PoE, a pure tank looks to avoid them outright.

All melee, all the time. Hard mode gogogo This is like saying that plate mail doesn't belong in a fantasy setting. Because the two were always contemporaneous in actual history. heyooooooooo

It's right under the "Make Toast" button, in between the Bishie Sparkles slider and the Dreams toggle. Right up until the AI tells your guy to do a thing for no appreciable reason. Yeah.

Constitution should generally represent the ability to endure, remain whole, and stand by your core identity, with respect to mental influence as well as getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest. It's not like there's a shortage of supernormally persuasive people or characters with wacky mind powers in this game to build scenes of that type around. But then, Dexterity and Constitution are both just buckets of fail in this respect. Like you say, it is what it is.

OP - you're undervaluing Dwarves for one minor reason. Dropping Dex to 2 gives you an attribute point to spend somewhere else. Not a huge deal, but worth noting. Not what that means. This, on the other hand, is a textbook use of a strawman - you are setting up the other party's proposal (low Dexterity) as something that it isn't (useless hunk of metal [never mind that it's a contradiction to call something useless and then immediately supply a use for it]), in order to make your own look better. You may not be doing it on purpose, you may not even be aware of it, but that's what it is. In any case, Dexterity below 10 really doesn't matter as much as you think it does. A Dex 2 sword-and-shield can reliably and regularly pump out enough damage to be useful - they just won't be a top damage dealer by any means There can be a difference, but there's not necessarily one. People have triple crown solo'd this game with heavy tanks. Even if dumping Dex did that (it doesn't, see above), it might still be, depending on the team. Mind you, a paladin would be a better useless hunk of metal, but that's just a question of opportunity costs. I happen to agree with you, btw. Due to a mix of damage-increasing and self-healing abilities, the absolute most optimal use of a fighter is as a strong off-tank. I don't see how low Dex prevents them from performing as such, but there are good arguments for having at least average Dex on your off-tank fighter. A pure tank fighter is a wannabe paladin.

Do we know exactly how retaliation works with paired weapons, yet? In particular, I'm wondering about weapons' special properties. For instance, if you have one Draining weapon, and one Rending weapon, which property will get applied? One? Both? Neither? What about damage? Interrupt? Which weapon gets used? When? Any information would be appreciated.