gkathellar

Mechanics, stealth mode. That's it.

It's been stated repeatedly that the "Shipping Soon" status on the portal is wrong, and that everything has already shipped.

It does effect their duration. The sentence is just poorly composed.

Low int penalizes AoE and duration - the object of the build being that it doesn't need either. That's more-or-less all. well, not exactly. the 3 int also modifies will saves. you is gonna start with a 17 will save. at level 8, your will save is a 38. you can somewhat counter the impact o' near guaranteed failed wills saves by taking bull's will, but that does cost a talent, and talents is vital. you are gonna face many will saves in the game. something to consider. is still a powerful build, but it would be good even w/o tanking int. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, but you counter loss of will by pumping Resolve. Which adds to your will saves. Thus you're starting with even more will saves then your default 10res/int stats. Precisely by 5 more with 16 Resolve. it doesn't quite work out that way, does it? you actually have worse will saves with the 3/15 split on intelligence and resolve as 'posed to 10/10... but that is precise why it makes sense not to tank int. take 10 int and 15 resolve (not that we suggest doing so for a rogue) gets you 30 on will saves as 'posed to 17. regardless, we sure as heck don't want worse than 10/10, but am s'posing we is more concerned with saves than is some other folks. *shrug* HA! Good Fun! Pretty sure he's talking about 3 - 18, not 3 - 15. The only reason to stay at 15 is to keep Con at 9, which is pretty pointless.

Gromnir speaks true. You don't need a priest, but damned if they're not worth the party slot. The divine casters in this game are both tremendously versatile and effective, and you'll find that both make your life a fair bit easier.

TWF is perfectly viable, although whether it's your best choice depends on your build and on what you're trying to do with it. Strikers and DPS types generally do well with it. The most important thing to bear in mind about TWF is that recovery penalty of anything above padded armor is going to significantly cut into its efficacy.

Iconic Projection, too. Gotta be my favorite spell.

Both of them get a lot of mileage out of guns, yeah. Rogues appreciate the range and high base damage, and Ciphers can generate a lot of focus very quickly with a single shot. You may want to look into Island aumaua if you go the rogue route - the extra weapon slot it grants allows you to switch between several guns, firing much more quickly without having to worry about reloading in between shots (at least until you've fired from all of your weapon slots).

Fire godlike really seems like it should add something to a Turning Wheel monk, but my own experience suggests that it usually doesn't. Battle-forged just doesn't come up unless you're taking damage faster than you should be, at which point you drop a heal and lose the benefits of Battle-forged. Even in Sensuki's video, I didn't see his Endurance ever drops below 50%, meaning Battle-forged never came into play. I won't say the ability is categorically useless for monks, but I personally haven't seen them get much mileage out of it. But yes, Turning Wheel is sick! In general, a tanking monk will want heavy armor and a shield, which may not sound very monk-like, but it does work out pretty well. I've never tried to run an unarmed/lightly armored DPS monk, but I've seen people claim that they're solid.

I'm not much of a math person myself so I'm not sure, but given your calculation it seems like it's effectively a tossup, probably a bit in favor of the Aumaua. Low int penalizes AoE and duration - the object of the build being that it doesn't need either. That's more-or-less all. Anyway, play in the way that suits you best. There are definitely dual wield rogue builds that use higher intelligence. I just happen to be fond of this one.

It absolutely can, although of course it's a different variety of power. It bears noting that Rogues really benefit from teaming up with spellcasters, who can hand out the conditions that make their sneak attacks fire off. In general, yeah. Wizard lacks the sheer blasting and buffing power of a druid, and tries to make up for it with defensive spells that aren't very good and AoE debuffs which are pretty good but are hard to lay down without hitting one's allies. Druid is the AoE king. Its shapeshifting abilities aren't worth a damn, but it has a large suite of powerful elemental spells, mixed in with a few buffs and short-range heals. It plays much the way you might imagine a wizard playing, actually. It's not strictly better than the Cipher, which occupies a different role. Ciphers blend DPS with debuffing, while doing away with worries about saving your spells for later. I'd say they're on of the best-designed classes, if not actually the best. Their abilities are interesting, they contribute actively to every fight, and they have a unique playstyle that blends very well with firearms.

It does, and it's true that you might well drop the last point of Con for more Resolve or Perception. It won't make a ton of difference either way. The reason you want Hearth Orlan is its special ability, Minor Threat, which converts 10% of hits to crits when attacking the same target as one of your allies. This is notably more valuable than a few more points of Might. You can run any culture or background with the build above. If you want, Living Lands will let you stuff another point into Might. Backgrounds and cultures do effect dialog options, but not in any way particular to this build. So far as I know, 3 Int won't cost you any dialog options that 10 or 8 Int doesn't. There's no stupid-speak; PoE rewards high attributes with dialog options, rather than penalizing low ones. So while you're not going to get any lines that require an Int of 12 or 14 or whatever, but that's not going to destroy your experience.

As far as combat goes, you'll want Intelligence, Might, and Dexterity (in roughly that order of priority) to be as high as possible.

Obviously you can do whatever you want, barring actual crimes.

Various armor types are indeed different from one another. The problem is that those differences amount to some being better and some being categorically worse. It would be nice if that were less true.

Priest is non-essential as long as you bring enough tank to make up the difference. I've run a Paladin/Monk/Cipher/Druid/Chanter/Rogue group through Hard in the BB, and my druid never had to use any healing spells, nor did I use any healing items. My paladin probably used Lay On Hands once. It probably would have gone worse had I not built my Paladin and Monk specifically for damage absorption, but I didn't have much in the way of trouble. Moral of the story: Ancient Memory is sick.

There's some incentive to go for a wood elf (for the ranged combat bonus) or an island aumuauauauaua (for the extra weapon slot). Aside from that, you're pretty much on the right track, although Might is more important than Dexterity. I'd max all three stats, so it doesn't matter much. Stay away from any kind of armor, use an arquebus, and have fun.

That's odd, because my own experience with tanky paladins has been that they are fantastic. Mind you, they can't kill anything at all, but they can soak it up like nothing else while your killers do the work. What kind of build were you using?

This is by far the slickest TWF rogue build I've seen, and it meets basically all of your criteria: I've played it, and it's pretty great. Open in combat with a blunderbuss or pistol, then switch to paired stilettos and flank. Crippling Strike gives you 2 damage spikes per encounter. Go for 4 Con and 18s in Resolve and Perception. I know the low Con makes it look fragile, but my experience is that even with 4 Constitution in padded armor or robes, it can actually take a surprising amount of punishment. Nonetheless, its primary role is to strike and fade - which is what you wanted, I believe. The whole thing with Int is that it effects durations and AoE radius, and so basically every class normally wants it. This build is one of the rare exceptions. As a crit-fisher, it doesn't need anything Intelligence has to offer, and so can drop it. It's a beautiful stabbing machine with 4 of its attributes high enough to get virtually all conversation options related to them.

Because they assume they've gotten it right, and do in-house playtesting as if they've gotten it right. I don't mean that as an insult, btw. It's very difficult not to do, and it's part of the reason why beta playtests are a thing - very few people can go into a system they've designed, bend it until it breaks, and then say, "screw me and screw my intent, that just happened." Unfortunately, Obsidian does not have infinite time or manpower to address issues, and solutions aren't always obvious or elegant. Remember accuracy? The solution there ended up being a change to the underlying math. So yeah, it happens. This is a fairly benign example. There are some real horror stories out there, if you start reading up on D&D3E and Pathfinder.

PoE is set in a part of Eora (the Dyrwood) that does tend to place women in domestic roles, but to nowhere near the extent they would have been in much of the world when it was at roughly the same degree of technological advancement. One imagines that, locally, this is a matter of pragmatism; Dyrwood does business and has alliances with people who have more fluid, or even inverted, gender roles relative to its own. How much we'll see that come up in game is an open question. Probably not a tremendous amount, if only to avoid starting a big stupid foofaraw. (And, for the record: the flavor text for the Gender screen in character creation is by far the best example of such that I have ever seen in any CRPG ever.)

Which is just another one of those really odd, counter-intuitive things in PoE. Monk with a (non-fist) weapon? Monk with a shield? Monk with... heavy armour? While clearly not the intention, my headcanon is that they're actually sort of like Yamabushi warrior monks. Hell if they fought unarmed or unarmored. Monk generates exactly enough wounds with heavy armor (also it's possible to be much less wound-dependent than advertised, depending on how you build your monk).

Blame the decision-making process that made Perception useless for Wizards. Racial and Cultural bonuses. You can get Might up to 21 with an Aumaua with the right culture. no no you didnt understand mate, what iam saying is how they can have + 19 additional stats. when everyone else have 18 and the char u create has 18 aswell ( 15 + racial +2, culture + 1 ) There's a long tradition of companions in these types of games having ridiculously overinflated stats. I'd be disappointed if some the companions weren't cheating. Haha and then there were also characters with stat distributions that looked like someone forgot to add sidestats after the initial draft. Hello 10-in-four Edwin. Good thing he made up for the terrible stat distribution with a borderline cheating amulett. ... and then there were characters that were bad from the raw stat distribution, but became unstoppable killing machines when equipped with certain items. Hello Korgan with 18 DEX gloves... So I wouldn't value the initial stat distribution of NPCs that high. They probably get some story-boosts to certain attributes via user-restricted items. Maybe. But until we see, I don't think there's any reason to predict that this will be the case. I have yet to encounter evidence that the developers know the ins and outs of their game nearly as well as they think they do, and I get the consistent impression that it's because they haven't tried pushing its mechanics to their outer limits.

oh no you didn't Planescape slang is all grounded in RL British slang, yo. *snaps thrice* GK out.

Weapon-and-shield monk in heavy armor is best monk. Almost as gross as a spellcaster!