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Increasing a character's stats past the baseline value of 10 should have only positive effects on gameplay and combat. Following this is good game design and makes sense. In PoE, there are many abilities that have drawbacks such as afflicting the character for a duration or forcing them to take damage. In all of those scenarios I've found, the following things happen with regard to self-harming effects: Duration increases with the player's INT, beneficial effect increase (like from Strand of Favor, which contradicts its description), and Power Level (if class ability). Damage the player takes increases with player's MIG, Power Level (if class ability), and all percent damage increases such as the human race bonus when bloodied or near death. Why does INT increase the duration of these harmful effects while RES simultaneously reduces it? Now we have two stats that the player wants to increase, both contradicting each other. INT should have no influence on duration, which will allow RES to do its job properly. The reason it works like this currently is that the game treats self-harming effects as both helpful and harmful. This should not be the case. On the other hand, ability self-damage should scale as the character becomes stronger to keep things balanced. All the abilities I mention below are relatively balanced to Power Level. Because self-damage is almost exclusively raw and all +% bonus damage increases will scale this damage up, it's easy to see that things can very quickly get out of hand. Forcing this self-damage to scale from Power Level only will allow DPS characters to use abilities like Frenzy and Sacred Immolation without having to compensate with high CON. The following abilities should be changed: Monk Forbidden Curse duration. Should be RES only. Monk Forbidden Curse damage tick. Should be PL only. Blood Mage's self-damage should be PL only. It's almost certainly being affected, but there's no tooltip and since it's random damage there's no way to prove it via screenshot. Paladin's Sacred Immolation damage tick. Should be PL only. Barbarian's Frenzy damage tick. Should be PL only. Blunderbuss's Powder Burns duration. Should be RES only. Wizard Spell Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Should be PL only. Strand of Favor's passive effects both apply to self-inflicted effect duration. Only the Ward of Favor ability should apply. Fixing the scaling issues of harmful self-inflicted effects would be a strong improvement to combat overall. This will make the commonly ignored aspects of some classes and builds competitive, which would enhance the game's variety.

Ok... here's the thing.... I really, really do not like the interrupt mechanic as currently implemented. Not as something that can happen from any attack. Interrupting spells in the process of casting - fine. Interrupting attacks, but using a spell or ability - fine. But this whole "any attack can interrupt any action" mechanic? Nuh-uh. Nope. Bad mechanic. And here's why, from a game design standpoint. Interrupt, as currently implemented adds RNG to battle, but in a really unpredictable way that is hard to anticipate. Good, rewarding mechanics are all about giving the player various tools to make intelligent decisions with. Making an intelligent decision about interrupt is extremely, extremely difficult. As I've gone into more detail about here: (http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67761-dps-vs-accuracy-deflection-heres-the-maths-enjoy/?p=1493755), actually figuring out how interrupt affects your effectiveness in combat is highly nontrivial. Interrupt (and by extension the current version of RES/PER) is extremely difficult for a player to place a value on, which means that any build choices regarding interrupt aren't because the player knows what they're trading off, but more based on a qualitative "feel" for which they like better. And don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking qualitative feels. Despite what my math-focused posts may lead you to believe, I am not a powergamer or a min/maxer. I like doing the math and knowing what my choices are, but I rarely derive any enjoyment from simply choosing the most optimal thing. I like to RP in CRPGs, and my choices about stats and abilities and weapons and armor are often affected by that. So don't misinterpret me here - I'm a fan of qualitative choices. And many players are. But that's no excuse for bad design. Even if a player wants to make a choice based on what they qualitatively prefer or find more fun, that doesn't mean they shouldn't also have the tools to know what the implications of their decisions are. So to summarize - I think interrupt (as currently implemented with anything able to interrupt anything) is a bad mechanic. I think the game would be better without it. What do you think? And to round off my argument with the final nail in my web of logic and reasoning... Boo interrupt. PS - Remember that it's still early enough to potentially make large changes to the mechanics. And while I don't think interrupt ruins the game or anything, I think it would be undeniably better without it (at least without the current implementation.) If people agree with me, maybe OE will see it and think about improving it. If not, then OE doesn't need to change anything because the majority of their testers don't care.